Sword Art Online : A Different Story
by Whiteflame13
Summary: A different perspective of two British teenage gamers in a world where adventure and danger lie around every corner.
1. Chapter 1

The day had finally come, Sword Art Online the first virtual reality massively multi-player online role playing game for the Nerve Gear system had finally been released to the public and had just launched for it's first time. My name is Steven Keywood and I was a 16 year old gamer with medium length flat lying brownish blonde hair and dark gray blue eyes. I was in my small bedroom which contained a bed, a cupboard and a drawer, I sat on my bed which was covered with a blank duvet and began to boot up my Nerve Gear system with the brand new game disc already in place. When everything was ready I picked up the plugged in head gear and laid down on my bed and placed it on. When the gray visor covered my eyes from the world I saw the time in the top left, 13:00, and the charging battery symbol on the right.

I then closed my eyes and let the full dive link begin. A moment after I closed my eyes bright blue circles began to appear in front of me bearing the words, touch, sight, hearing, taste, smell each individually coming online and then changing to OK once linked fully to my nervous system. They all then went green and flew off of the screen from the sides. Then came the language option, as I was from the . I chose English, this then disappeared and a login appeared in which I entered my account details and logged in. This then led to a large panel corresponding to my character creation where my In Game Name would be Woods, I pressed Yes. The screen went gray. Where the words in big black words "Welcome To Sword Art Online !"

This is how my adventure began.

As my senses began to fully synchronise into the world I slowly began to smell the light and sandy sent of the sandstone ground below me, I began to hear the countless voices of all the hundreds of players around me and as I finally opened my eyes I found myself in a huge city circle surrounded by beige coloured stone buildings with a grand white marble staircase leading to a large domed roof building but the thing that caught my eye instantly was the grand fountain which centred the whole circle. You could see every droplet in motion and see them reflect the light of the sun, which hung high in the blue sky. It was such a spectacular sight that I could hardly believe that it had been recreated in a virtual world.

I looked down at myself to see that I was wearing a dark green cloth shirt which was mostly covered by a leather chest guard and a pair of leather shoulder pads. I then reached my hand over to my back to feel the leather grip of a sword sheathed into it's scabbard, this was the reason I was here and this is why I shall stay. I drew it from it's sheath to see that it was a simple but perfectly balanced, moderately light feeling, shining metal short sword which had the look of never being used before. I moved the sword to reflect my face, I looked to see that I had been able to create a character that was nearly the same as my own real world body, gray blue eyes and long brownish blond hair.

After I reluctantly sheathed my simple sword I looked around properly to see that there was several roads leading off from the city circle. "But which to go down" I thought to myself. However as I couldn't decide a route, from a variety of equally interesting paths, I opened up my menu ,which was a smooth floating white panel which responded to my touch and was impossibly thin, and quickly opened up my map which was another like panel except blue. On this it showed the name of the spawn area I was in, "The Town of Beginnings", and had the city circle layout showing all of the different routes which led off from it and what they each individually held within them.

After carefully looking at each of the different choices in front of me I decided to go down the one which led to the town exit nearest to me. I chose this route so that I could get out of town and fight some of the low level monsters that were always around spawns to get some exp before my friend Andrew, who took weeks to persuade his parents to let him buy the game, logged onto SAO and we start doing quests with me. As I walked down the wide street I saw many different players talking to each other, walking to one place or another or buying items from the varied and numerous shops which lined most of the streets. As I walked past I saw that the stall had a range of items on show from armor and weapons to potions and foods which I had never even seen before in the real world."They must of spent years to create all this in such detail !" I exclaimed to myself.

When I reached the end of the road I was greeted with granite and marble archway exit which lead into endless fields of grass which flowed gently in the calm wind, these lined a smooth and straight dirt path which went as far as the eye could see. Within these fields I could see a number of animals walking around and grazing on the short grass. They were large dark gray furred animals with large red eyes and great white tusks protruding from the lower jaw of it's mouth.

Boars, I recognised them from the trailers, which advertised the game as a different world where we could forget about our real world troubles, have fun, relax and to break the limits of normal life. As I looked at the boars I noticed a small red crystal floating above their heads and a large green bar near their head showing their health, this is when I realised that these beasts would be the weakest and lowest level enemies in the whole game and I began to dread what we would have to face in the highest levels of Aincrad. However as I drew my sword once more I regained my confidence and charged down at the first of the boars, I drew my sword back, saw it glow a bright red and stabbed it straight at the neck my foe. The blade stuck into the virtual flesh for a moment before it's health bar hit zero and it exploded into hundreds of pixels which floated off in the breeze. A small panel appeared where the boar died showing how much I had earned from the kill, 24 exp and 30 Col but no item drops.

For the next hour or so I went around killing these boars getting my base level up to level 2 and my swords skill up to level 3. By now I was exhausted from the exertion and my sword arm felt like a lump of metal. I opened up the menu to see that it was now 16:54. I had been on for way over an hour and I realised that Andrew should be logging in soon so I decided to head back through the streets to the spawn area. By now practically everyone who had the game was now online and so the streets were completely packed and when I got to the city circle hundreds of people could be seen standing around talking.

I quickly spotted the reason for my return to the circle. Standing near the central fountain was a 16 year old boy with short curly brown hair and dark brown eyes, wearing a turquoise shirt and similar leather armor to me, was playfully swinging his virtual sword around in front of himself with a look of absolute excitement on his face. As I walked over to him, laughing at his carefree nature, he noticed me and began making his way over to me as well while at the same time sheathing his sword.

"So we are finally in here, a virtual world without limits." I said to Andrew when we met up.

"Much better than the real world at least. So now that we are here lets get started with some quests." he responded slowly, still in awe of his surroundings.

"Well lets party up then and get a bit of training out of town before we go at any main quests." I replied patiently before opening my menu and sending him a friend and party request at the same time, which he quickly accepted from a like panel which appeared in front of him.

A new bar appeared under my own health bar on the top left of my user interface and I quickly realise that it's showing Andrew's health and in game name now that we are part of a party.

"Terra, I like it, it suits you and sounds pretty cool as well." I comment after seeing his name floating slightly over his full green health bar.

"Woods, hmmmm such an original name for you isn't it " he responded in amusement at seeing my name which was so obvious to anyone who knew my name.

"Okay I know the way out of to-" I began before the loud sound of a bell resonated throughout the whole floor stopping me mid sentence and seemingly silencing everyone on the server. A few moments after this circles of blue and white light began to appear all over the city circle which people began to materialise from looking confused at what had just happened to them.

"A forced teleport? What's going on?" I say seriously beginning to get a bit worried about the situation. When the city circle was completely filled with the 10,000 players which were logged in, the sky began to fill with glowing red hexagons with the words "WARNING" and "System Announcement". Suddenly a section above the domed building began to bleed a red goo. This goo formed into a large mass with parts hanging from the now red sky. Then electricity could be seen flowing through the red mass making it start to take it's true form. A huge floating figure draped in a large blood red robe with nothing showing but it's gray, dead looking hands.

From the assembled players screams, gasps and scared voices were easily audible and this is when I truly began to get scared for what was in store for the players.

"Attention players." came a deep booming voice from the powerful and imposing figure. "Welcome to my world. My name is Kayaba Akihiko. As of this moment, I am the sole person who can control this world. I am sure you've already noticed that the logout button is missing from the menu." confused at this, I whipped open to my menu and skim searched for the logout button, but as we had just been informed, it wasn't there. "But this is not a defect in the game. I repeat, this is not a defect in the game. It is a feature of Sword Art Online" people were now truly getting confused and for those who realised what this meant were completely shocked and anger could be seen in their eyes, we were trapped against our will in a virtual world.

"You cannot log out of SAO yourselves and no one on the outside can shutdown or remove the nerve gear. Should this be attempted the the transmitter inside the nerve gear will emit a powerful microwave, destroying your brain and thus ending your life." People were beginning to shout even more in outrage or terror now that the fact that this game had become a death trap had begun to truly sink in.

"Unfortunately, several players' friends and families have ignored this warning, and attempted to remove the Nerve Gear. As a result, two hundred and thirteen players are gone forever, from both Aincrad and the real world." a moment after this a number of floating panels which showed news broadcasts concerning the event appeared in front of him for all to see.

"As you can see, news organisations across the world are reporting all of this, including the deaths. Thus, you can assume that the danger of a Nerve Gear being removed is now minimal. I hope you will relax and attempt to clear the game. But I want you to remember this clearly. There is no longer any method to revive someone within the game. If your HP drops to zero, your avatar will be forever lost. And simultaneously, the Nerve Gear will destroy your brain. There is only one means of escape. To complete the game." That was it, now the full extent of what was happening was out, this virtual world was no longer just a game it was now a fight for survival and a fight to get as many people standing here in the square out of the game alive back into the real world where families waited for loved ones to wake.

"You are presently on the lowest floor of Aincrad, Floor 1. If you make your way through the dungeon and defeat the floor boss, you may advance to the next level. Defeat the final boss on floor 100, and you will clear the game." 100 floors worth of dungeons and 100 bosses, that was the trial we had to face, but how many would come out of it at the end.

"Finally, I've added a present from me to your item storage. Please see for your self." At this everyone, including me and Andrew opened up our personal inventories to see that there was only one item placed in there, "Mirror". We all went to activate it to see what it actually was, after I activated mine I caught a small square mirror that appeared from thin air and looked into it, seeing my in game avatar before being engulfed in a plume of blue light. When the light subsided I felt shorter and slightly less muscled, I looked into the mirror to see that my in game avatar, which I made to represent my real world body with some alterations, had turned into an exact replica of my own body without a single visible flaw. This was my body but it was also now my avatar in which I would have to live through this world in. I turned to look at Andrew who also had only slightly been changed to his real world body, but as I looked around people had been completely transformed to represent their true body. There was children, teenagers middle age men and people that could be seen from every known background. We had all been changed and there was no turning back as each of our mirrors shattered in our hands and fell to the ground where the still glowing particles disappeared.

Kayaba began to speak again and all attention was drawn to his imposing and unchanged avatar. "Right now, you're probably wondering "Why?". Why would Kayaba Akihiko, Developer of Sword Art Online and the Nerve Gear, do all this? My goal has already been achieved. I created Sword Art Online for one reason, to create this world and intervene in it. And now, it is complete. This ends the tutorial for the official launch of Sword Art Online. Good luck, players." A few moments later the figure began to flicker and fuzz up, it began to evaporate away into the virtual world from which it was conjured and within a couple of seconds it had disappeared with no sign of it ever being there. The sky suddenly emptied of the redness that had plagued it for the last 5 minutes and the falling sun lit the previously dark circle.

A lot of people were still staring at the spot where Kayaba had just disappeared from still in shock from the unbelievable turn in events whereas others were desperately hitting the logout button in vain with the rest of the players moving from the circle distraught or with an undying vengeance against the game's creator. I turned to look at Andrew and saw the terror on his face, he looked at me and said in a quiet voice.

"We're trapped here, no way out and with death waiting for us every second of the day. How are we supposed to get through all 100 floors alive, I mean I heard the betas only got to around level 20 and they had it easier."

"Your forgetting that there is around 9,800 people still left in this world and all of them wanting to get out of here, with this many people it's a certainty that we are going to get out however long it takes. There's no need to worry about getting out the only bad thing is what's happening in the world outside us." I respond in a calm force. "And anyway do you think that I would let you go down while I'm still able to fight, trust me we are getting out of here alive no matter how long it takes or how much we have to sacrifice, we will survive to see the light of day." I continue in a stronger voice intending to bring strength back into my friend.

"Well then in that case, we better get started on that dungeon shouldn't we." he replied slightly braver as he drew his sword. "So which way is it to the outside?."

"This way, follow me. I was out there fighting some boars before you got on and to be honest they weren't the hardest enemies for the exp and money you get from them." I say before also drawing my sword and turning to walk in the direction I had originally came from before the game had become a death trap. As we walked down the streets we saw many people buying weapons, armor and potions with a fiery determination. When we reached the fields number of players could be seen fighting boars without mercy and getting better and better with their weapons of choice from each swipe. With this amount of sheer grit and anger there was no way we couldn't get through this.

As the initial field was already being farmed we decided to charge down the dirt path to reach the next small town where we hoped there would be a good amount of quests to take or monsters to fight so that we could level up as fast as we could to be ready for the boss battle when the time was right.


	2. Chapter 2

This is how it began for the players now trapped in Aincrad. Those smart or strong enough left town and began to train with no end in sight, players began to map out the main dungeon area before the floor boss, players had got past the initial shock of the first day and had begun to adjust to life in the virtual world and had formed groups of friends and the beginnings of guilds were being formed within the main frontline players. However over the first month over 2,000 people had died from being to low of a level to fight in the dungeons, not being able to adapt to the world truly and therefore falling in a fight or simply through suicide caused by despair and hopelessness. Even with all this time and the many deaths the first floor had yet to be cleared, but we were ready and waiting.

"OI! WAKE UP!" I opened my eyes slowly and groggily moved my head up to see Andrew standing in the door of my bedroom wearing his usual dark blue shirt and full set of leather armor with a sharp white steel rapier hanging from his belt.

"You were supposed to be up over 20 minutes ago, the meeting is gonna start soon and your still in your bloody bed." he said with annoyance in his voice.

"Yer, Yer okay I know. Still no need to shout so loud, you have something called manners." I replied slowly as my brain started to wake up from the night's sleep of the usual bout of strange meaningless dreams. I got out of bed with a yawn and a stretch and equipped my gear ready to get out. I had donned a gray shirt with a metal chest plate and black metal bracers, I had a large two handed long sword strapped to my back with a leather strip which attached to it's dark red scabbard.

I was standing in the room of a small 2 bedroom house which me and Andrew had pooled are money to buy so that we would have somewhere near the boss dungeon so that we could go out and fight higher level monsters for most of the day with the rest of the Frontliners without worrying about a long walk home. Within the first month the main fighters who were always up at the dungeon clearing areas and mapping out a way to the boss room for a later date had been named the Frontliners by most of the players for what they dedicated practically all of their time to doing.

Today was one of the first official and organised meet up of the Frontliners in the town nearest the dungeon, the one we lived in, to discuss a proper strategy of how we should deal with the boss room which hadn't yet been found.

"When was the meeting supposed to be exactly, as you know I can never remember times when people talk to me." I ask Andrew as I walk out of my room with him at my side.

"It was set to be at noon, which is in literally 5 minutes you lazy idiot." he said irritably yet with a small smile.

"Crap, I overslept that much! Well I better forget about that nice breakfast I was just thinking about and we better start running." I said surprised at how late it really was.

The meeting was set in an amphitheatre like structure, made from the same sandstone as spawn was, where the speaker could be easily seen and heard and there was plenty of seats for everyone to sit in. When we arrived only about 20 players were assembled with Diabel, the person who organised the meeting, who had blue hair, blue clothes with an iron chest plate and shoulder guards, a sword with a blue grip in the back of his belt and a shield on his back, was standing on the stage area of the building. We decided to sit up at the back area so that we could see all over the building and could see each person easily and in detail about them.

"Okay, lets get started people!" He shouted in a friendly voice to everyone as we sat down. "Thank you for coming today. My name is Diabel. I like to consider my job as a knight." he continued in a loud voice before receiving a laugh at his last comment.

"There's no job system in the game!" came a laughing voice from the crowd.

"Today, our party found the boss room at the top of the tower." he announced revealing the main topic of the meeting to the assembled players who began to listen intently to what he was saying. "We need to defeat the boss, reach the second floor, and tell everyone waiting in the Town of Beginnings that it is possible to beat this game. Everyone present here shares this duty! Do you all agree?" he continued with confidence and passion and at his last comment people began to mutter their agreements and then began clapping which we joined in.

"All right, then let us begin our planning. First, divide into parties of six." I looked round at Andrew and realised that we only really knew each other in this world and most of the other people had large groups of friends so we decided just to stick as the usual pair that we had been for the last month, not even bothering to find a full party.

"An ordinary party has no chance against a floor boss. We'll need to form a raid group using multiple parties." at this I looked around at the groups to see that me and Andrew weren't the only pair along the top rows on the other side there was a boy with black hair a blue shirt and an iron chest plate sitting next to a red hooded and cloaked girl. After everyone had finished forming parties and it had quieted down a bit Diabel continued.

"Okay, have we formed our parties? Then-" he continued before being interrupted by a loud shout from a person standing at the top of the building.

"Just a second!" He shouted before jumping down the stairs quickly and then facing Diabel. He had ginger hair with random spikes in them and he wore a beige shirt with a scale mail shirt slightly protecting his front and he was armed with a simple sword on his back.

"My name's Kibaou. I wanna say something before we take on the boss." he said in a loud voice and turned to the audience. "Some of you here need to apologize to the two thousand who have died so far!" he shouted with anger pointing his finger at the amassed players.

"Kibaou-san, are you referencing to the beta testers?" Diabel asked with a hint of irritation in his voice.

"Of course I am!" Kibaou shouted back, now again facing Diabel. "On the day this stupid game started, the beta guys ditched us beginners, and they all disappeared. They took all of the good hunting spots and easy quests for themselves, so only they could get stronger. And then, they just ignored the rest of us." turning back to the crowd with anger on his face he shouted. "I'm sure some one here was in the beta! They should get on their knees and apologize, and give up all the items and money they've hoarded." he demanded with a strong voice. "Otherwise, we can't trust them to protect us as party members, and they shouldn't trust us!" He finished loudly.

After a few moments of silence a low voice was heard from a member of the crowd. "May I speak?" A person with dark skin rose from his seat wearing a beige short sleeve shirt and an axe strapped to his back. He walked down in front of Kibaou and Kibaou was completely intimidated by the great figure that towered over him.

"My name is Egil. Kibaou-san, tell me if I have this right. You're saying that because the beta testers didn't take care of them, many beginners died. That they should take responsibility, apologize, and provide compensation. Correct?" He asked Kibaou in a strong, unwavering voice.

"Y-Yeah." Kibaou responded slightly hesitantly.

"You got this guide book, didn't you?" Egil asked while pulling out a small brown book from his pocket. "It was provided for free at the item store."

"Sure, I did... Why?" he asked with confusion.

"It was compiled information given by beta testers." He turned to the now curious crowd. "Listen. Everyone had equal access to this information. And even still, many players died. I thought the topic of discussion here was what we could learn from their deaths, and how that can help us defeat the boss." He turned now back to the defeated and irritated Kibaou before Kibaou walked back to a seat and sat down in defeat. Egil then also went and sat back down.

"All right" Diabel began. "Then, can we resume?" The crowd nodded their answer.

"The latest edition of that guide book was just issued, and it contains information on the boss." he continued to the astonishment of the crowd. "According to it, the boss's name is Illfang the Kobold Lord. He is guarded by assistants known as Ruin Kobold Sentinels. He is armed with an axe and a buckler. He has four bars of health, and when the last one enters red, he switches to a curved sword-type weapon called a Talwar. His attack pattern changes, as well. This concludes the briefing. Lastly, items will automatically be distributed. EXP goes to the party that defeats the monster. And whoever receives an item keeps it Any objections?" no objections come forth so he closed the meeting. "Okay, we leave tomorrow at ten in the morning. See you there!"

At this people get up and begin to talk amongst themselves and some start the short walk back to the town centre. Me and Andrew however get up and go to the town blacksmith NPC to get our equipment quickly repaired before going in for a whole day of hard grinding against the lizard men and wolves in the first floor dungeon of forests. We do this until we reach a cave area in the side of a large hill at the centre of the floor which we hadn't come across before.

"Want a look in there to see if there's anything interesting?" I ask Andrew as I look into the darkness of the seemingly deep cave.

"Naturally, I'll light a torch and you go up front incase of any monsters." He replies as he takes out a lit torch from his inventory and holds it up lighting the path ahead. I grip my sword with both hands and slowly walk into the cave carefully checking all sides and shadows for monsters. But instead of a monster room we are confronted by a large stone door engraved with simple symbols.

I lower my sword and look at the tall door that blocks my way forward.

"Well that wasn't to hard was it. Shame we can't just go in and take the boss down, would sort of defeat the whole point of the meeting." I comment with a fake sadness to it, Andrew laughs at this.

"Is it that heart wrenching that you can't face the big guy in a blaze of glory on your own. Come on we can't do much more and the suns going to be going down soon so we better start heading back home. And this time don't oversleep." He responds with a distinct smile.

The next morning I am sitting at the dark dining room table flicking though my maps when Andrew walks in groggily after obviously just waking up and looks at me surprised.

"How long have you been up then?" He asks before yawning loudly.

"All night I think. As I knew I would oversleep if I didn't. Anyway get ready then, It's nearly half nine and this time I intend to have a breakfast." I say slowly not moving my attention from my maps. "And I just realised, we must have walked past that stupid cave like 5 times now. Stupid trees getting in the way made it look like nothing was there and so we went another way. Oh well doesn't matter any more, we're going in there no matter what and we are going to clear it, hopefully without any deaths." I say irritated and seriously.

"Why are you always a grump if you stay up during nights, seriously you've been like that for years. Now come on turn those useless maps off and help me make something worth eating." He replies getting annoyed with my attitude.

"Just cause you can't cook or mix ingredients to save your life." I say with an arrogant smile. Andrew rolls his eyes at this before we both start laughing at our bickering.

After breakfast we arrived at the start of the dungeon floor where most of the Frontliners stood waiting. A few minutes later when everyone had arrived, Diabel gave us the plan.

"Okay now that we are all here we can go through the floor plan quickly. Each party will pick a route which each will lead to the centre area where the boss room is situated. This is due to preference of area and so that the floor area doesn't become overcrowded and hard to fight in if necessary. Any objections?" once again no objections came forth from the players. "Then everyone pick a route and we shall meet within an hour at the boss room, any late comers will have to join halfway into the battle." He finished off as the parties began to choose routes to follow.

"I've already made a good route for us during the night." I tell Andrew as I show him my map with the route marked on it.

"You staying up all night wasn't pointless then. Okay seems a good route and a one we've done before so shouldn't be too bad. Lets get going then." He replies with confidence before letting me take lead on a route which we usually went down when we were up here over the past month. It was a generally monster free route with an easy to follow path which lead to a larger path going to the boss room.

It took us around 20 minutes to reach the boss room door and there was only one other party already here. Unsurprisingly this group contained Diabel, Egil, Kibaou and three other players I recognised as some of the main Frontliners.

"We the only ones that have arrived so far?" I ask Diabel as we walk over to him.

"Yes, and I thought the plan was to be in parties of 6, not 2 people, however good you may be at this game." He answers after noticing that it was just me and Andrew arriving.

"We work best together on our own and we didn't actually know anyone who was at the meeting yesterday." I respond indifferently to his comment. "So the plan for the minions was to knock their weapons up and attack them when they are exposed while your party hits the boss unchallenged, correct?"

" Correct, except that we will all surround Illfang in the final red hp phase, but you make it sound as if we are purposely attacking the boss on our own just for the exp." He says in confirmation of what I was saying.

"I didn't say it like that, but anyway I can hear some more parties turning up so we better get ready for the fight ahead instead of arguing." I say seriously as I look over my shoulder to see at least two parties walking towards us from a clearing.

About 5 minutes later we had all assembled and we all knew the plan by heart and were ready for the imminent fight that presented itself on the other side of the stone door.

"Alright everybody, lets move out!" Diabel shouted to the players once he was certain we were ready. At this he got up and walked at the front of the procession of players with his sword and shield raised in preparation. When we reached the door we all drew our weapons of choice and held them up ready. Diabel then turned to us and rammed his sword into the soft soil ground.

"Listen up, everyone. I have only one thing to say. Lets win. Lets go." these final words were spoken with utter confidence and with the air of a leader speaking to his troops before a battle had initiated. He then turned to the door and pushed it open with one hand while his other picked up his sword. When the doors had opened a long hallway with pillars lining the side supporting the high roof and a polished red and gray marble floor, and at the end sitting on a stone throne upon a raised platform was the boss.


	3. Chapter 3

Illfang the Koblod lord was a large beast of red flesh and glowing red eyes, he had large rabbit like ears and a long and fat tail, he wielded a huge one bladed wooden handled axe which looked sharp enough to cleave through bone, flesh and armor alike. Without fear we walked into the room with Diabel a the point, this was the time we would fight and win for the first but not the last time.

When we had all entered the room the walls lit up with an iridescent glow which lit the whole hallway and seemingly awoke the kobold lord as he leapt from his throne with great power and landed in the middle of the hall where we could truly see what we were up against.

At this distance we could see that he wielded the imposing axe in one hand with a large shield in the other and on his lower back hung a large black sword like weapon that looked like an elongated butchers knife. As he landed with a tremendous thud he gave out a huge intimidating roar, at this his 4 health bars appeared along side his head and his nameplate and red crystal atop his head. Suddenly plumes of light started to appear round the room bringing small heavily armoured red lizard men carrying large maces of solid stone, the Ruin Sentinels.

They then all of a sudden charged head long at us with all their force.

"Commence Attack!" Ordered Diabel who sensed that this was the time to begin the fighting.

At his command we all charged into the oncoming enemies and all of us clashed against our foes at the same time. Me and Andrew were assigned to keep the sentinels busy which is exactly what we did. I attacked the sentinels weapons with all my strength to knock back or stun the enemy which was quickly followed by me moving back to face the next one while Andrew delivered the final blows the the stunned Kobold. Another strategy we both used was just to use pure strength and precision aiming to hit the sentinels in their armor's weak spot just below the chest area which would normally take them out within one to two hits. This was unlike anything we had faced before on the first floor, the monsters were much harder to hit due to their improved AI as a boss minion allowing them to successfully evade, block and parry a good number of our strikes. However even with them being as hard as they were the guard parties were making short work with the continually spawning sentinels allowing the main squad of 14 players to strike at Illfang all at the same time without suffering any casualties.

Throughout the fight Diabel was barking orders to everyone to get them to help other groups, disengage the monsters or to charge back in for the attack. However much I hated being ordered around I could see that his tactics were truly working in this fight and decided to follow his few orders to the guard groups. However much I may not like Diabel for what he was doing I had to admire his skill on the field and his cool head which seemed to be saving a lot of lives which an unorganised mindless attack would have taken.

The battle was in our favour and it was coming to a close as after I dispatched another of the sentinels with a now practiced ease I saw that Illfang's health was all but gone except for a small red section that still remained on the last bar. This is where, if the guide book was right, he should be changing weapons and his fighting style in an aggressive and dangerous way. He did this by just flinging his held weapons into the air and away from him, they fell loudly at each side of the hallway abandoned. No more Kobold sentinels were spawning into the room now that the final phase had begun.

When Diabel saw this happen he stopped the rest of us from attacking the now dangerous boss and boldly charged in himself, shield raised and glowing sword behind him. He stopped just in front of Illfang and raised his sword up further to let the sword skill truly charge up completely.

Illfang then drew the sword like weapon on his back and wielded it in one hand. I looked at it closely. That wasn't the Talwar that the book described. That was a Nodachi! Something had changed and now Diabel was running straight into a fight he was totally unprepared for.

"Jump back as fast a you can!" Shouted the black haired player from the other pair I saw the day before, he to had realised what was going on and was trying to warn Diabel of the danger he was in. However Diabel didn't hear the warning soon enough. When he was about to engage his enemy it Jumped up onto one of the pillars and began jumping between them before coming slamming his powered sword down onto the confused and unsuspecting Diabel. Diabel was thrown into the air by the powerful hit where he was again hit by the Boss' sword with great force and was thrown across the room where he landed with great force on the floor.

After his first victim was down he Jumped up and landed down in the centre of all the watching players who quickly either move away or prepare to block it's strong attacks. As both me and Andrew prepared for the fight I saw the Black haired person run Over to Diabel and begin to hurriedly talk to him but what happened afterwards I didn't see as I was now locked in brutal combat with the rest of the players against the boss that had indubitably just killed our brave leader. As it gave out a great roar and a powerful couple of sweeps the players fighting it including myself and Andrew were defeated and had to retreat back to avoid death.

However a few moments after this I saw the black haired player and his party member, the hooded and cloaked girl charge through the opening straight at the boss. Alone. The guy blocked Illfang's charged shot with one of his own while his partner who wielded a rapier went in for the attack. However Illfang shot out a quick attack which she was able to avoid but her cloak was completely destroyed, this revealed her as a young faced fighter with long flowing orange hair wearing a red jacket over a white shirt. She quickly followed up with a powerful stab which knocked Illfang back long enough for the guy to begin another attack against the boss. They performed the same block and switch tactic to perfection until Illfang changed his sweep halfway through which hit the guy right in the chest and threw him back into the girl and both of them onto the floor. The Kobold was over them within a few seconds and was swinging his weapon down at the two without mercy. The girl raised her rapier to try and block the attack and to protect her party friend who was still on the ground. However before the two swords hit each other Egil had charged in and had parried Illfang's blow with a massive sweep of his green glowing battle axe. This pushed him back a lot and far from the wounded player. At this the rest of the players rallied together and charged at their aggressor to allow the pair time to recover. The support attack we put up however, didn't last too long as we were all smashed down by a powerful sweep which evaded all of our blocks. Illfang then sprang into the air above us with the intention of falling back down and crushing us all below it's heavy body or deadly blade. However while it was in mid air the black haired player appeared above us and struck his sword at Illfang with enough strength to knock it off course and away from the players below it. He then charged down after it with the girl at his side. The resulting battle was quick. After a few powerful block and strikes the guy let out a huge battle cry and cut his sword through Illfang's whole body and cutting his head in half. This blow knocked him into the air where he exploded into a million particles with a large flash of blinding blue light.

We all stood there, staring wondering if it had ended or if it was just another trick. But after a few moments we all realised that we had done it. We had defeated the first boss, at long last we had done it. A large "Congratulations" appeared in the sky and everyone began to cheer in joy and excitement at our victory and looking at all the exp and money we had gained from the battle on little panels that had appeared in front of everyone. It took a few moments to quiet down but once we had we all looked to the player who had killed the boss which was Illfang the Kobold Lord and started applauding him. Egil and the girl he fought with were over by him talking to him. But not everyone was pleased at our first real victory.

"Why?" shouted Kibaou from the back of the crowd with anger in his voice. "Why did you let Diabel die?"

"Let him die?" The victor replied with confusion in his voice.

"Of course! You knew that technique the boss used! If you'd told us about that up front, he wouldn't have died!" He responded with pure anger mixed with some grief. People began to whisper between themselves at what was said and some agreeing with it.

"He must be a Beta Tester!" One of the players shouted his accusation at the victor. "That's how he knew all the Boss' attack patterns. He knew, but he didn't tell us! Other beta testers are here, too, right? Come out!" He demanded of the crowd. But if there was any beta testers no body came forward and only quietly talked with each other. This is when Egil went up to Kibaou and began talking angrily to him before a high pitched laughing of a man stopped him. It was the victor, all attention was on him again now.

"A Beta tester? I wish you wouldn't compare me to those newbies." he said to Kibaou cockily.

"W-What?!" Responded Kibaou who was extremely confused at this.

The victor began walking through the players towards Kibaou as he spoke. "Most of the thousand Beta testers were beginners who didn't even know how to level up. You guys are better than what they are." He stated indifferently. "But I'm not like them. I made it higher than anyone else during the beta test. The reason I know the Boss's skills is because I fought monsters with Katana skills on floors far above us. I know a lot more. Way more than any information broker." He continued with a tone of being above us all.

"W-What?" Kibaou repeated, still unsure about who he was facing. "That... That's way worse than a beta tester! You're cheating! A cheater!" he said irritated finally grasping what the victor was saying.

"A Beta tester and a cheater... A Beater!" one of the outraged players shouted at the victor.

"A Beater. I like it." The victor said in a smug voice "That's right... I am a Beater. From now on, don't confuse me with the other testers." He finished as he equipped a long flowing black coat and walked off towards the next floor staircase. All of the players stood there watching him, except for the girl who ran after him and held a small conversation before he walked off in victory to the next floor.

"Well we did it. We actually did it. We cleared the first floor. But we lost Diabel in that fight, the only one to fall." I say solemnly as I realise how much of a loss his death was.

"He did just run at the boss on his own, against his own plans as well. But yes he will be missed. But what about that Beater guy he didn't seem to bad till the end with Kibaou." Andrew replied seriously but with the undeniable tone of being happy at the battle.

"The Beater? Well to be honest from what I saw he was surprised at seeing a Nodachi in that battle and was luckily able to adapt and anyway I don't think there's actually much point going against him as the more knowledge or at least good players we have the quicker we get through the game." I say with certainty that what I am saying is right. "Now lets advance to the next floor. This one has become quite tedious don't you think." I say to Andrew in a posh British accent before calmly walking to the stairs which a large number of players were climbing now.

"Well with a new floor there's a whole new set of dungeons, monsters and a new boss at the end, and it's like that for the next 99 floors." he comments with an annoyance at how the world was created.

"Yes, but think about the new towns, terrains, items, buildings and adventures each new floor will bring. It's worth the constant battle." I say with curiosity about the next floor. We walk up the gray and smooth granite steps towards a small polished oak door which had a brass door knob. I held the cold and solid door knob turned it and pulled the door open. Behind the door was a shifting luminous nothingness of which I guessed to be a floor portal. So I walked through it without fear of the other side and was engulfed by the shifting lights of the portal until I stood upon a cliff which overlooked a vast expanse of hills grassy and a number of rocky mountains cutting through the many clouds that covered the sky.


	4. Chapter 4

Through the grassy valleys I could see a lot of ox like monsters grazing and paying little attention to the few players that had just crossed into this floor. I heard the door close with a thud behind me signaling the enter of Andrew into this floor. I looked for a way down from this entrance cliff when I saw three sets of stairs leading down to the valley below us each leading onto a different path leading in different directions.

I turned to Andrew who was still taking in the vast and almost uniform landscape when I asked. "So which way do we go, Left to the mountain range, straight ahead to the low valleys or right to the hilly are?"

"Lets go to the mountains to do some training as that's where the higher level monsters are going to be and most of the players are going down the centre path." He replied after a few moments of consideration.

"Left it is then, to the mountains the home of the Noble and Ancient Dwarven race." I say with pride remembering my old gaming nickname I gained from being unbelievably skilled and lucky when underground.

"Shame that Dwarves aren't even in this game then isn't it." He said with a smile also remembering easier times in the past. So we began the long trek to the mountain range after reaching the bottom of the 48 black marble stairs into a sparsely vegetated flat land. On this path we came across many of the ox monsters I saw earlier and so me and Andrew take the opportunity to fight these floor monsters. Due to their slow speed in attacking they posed little threat of hitting us and only took a few sword skills to kill. However these monsters had a collective AI and when one of them was attacked the rest that were around would come to the attacked ones aid making the battle much harder than it originally was. But this didn't put us off from attacking them it just made it more fun and more challenging fight which is what the first floor was recently unable to give us. After an hour or two of walking and battling we reached the foot of the mountain range.

"So do we just walk down the middle of it or what?" Andrew asked curiously after not seeing a main path leading through the area.

"We look for mountain passes along the sides of the mountains. These will hopefully lead onto the mountains where there are likely to be caves filled with either high level monsters or rare loot." I answer after a moment of thinking through our options. "And if we are on the floor anything could ambush us or simply fall on us without us being able to do anything about it." I continue with the tone of an experienced man, which of course I wasn't. So after this we began our search for any mountain side path which we could climb up onto the mountain sides. This search lasted for about 20 minutes of hard searching, we eventually found a narrow path which led up the side of one of the smaller mountains right on the edge of the range. I looked up at the sky for the sun and estimated that it was about 3 O'clock in the afternoon, plenty of time before having to set up a camp. As we walked up the narrow path small stones broke loose underfoot, dust and pebbles rained down on us every so often but surprisingly enough the treacherous path held no monsters of which I had expected to ambush us at any given moment. About half an hour later we had reached a small flat area with a wide, round and dark cave entrance into the side of the mountain.

"Well this is what we came here looking for and as we don't have much time left before we have to set up camp for the night, I think we should have a look." I say to Andrew slowly and cautiously as I carefully walk towards the opening with my sword raised with a firm grip and my eyes scanning the shadows for any sign of a monster of some sort. I quickly look behind me to see that Andrew also has his rapier raised in one hand and in another he was holding a lit torch in front of him to spread light around the cave. When I turn back I see a shadow quickly move once more back into the true darkness away from the light Andrew's torch was producing. I squint my eyes to make out anything in the darkness but I see nothing so I keep moving forward, more alert than before however. A few moments later out of the darkness 3 green and yellow skinned Goblins wielding formidable notched swords above their heads with one hand come charging at us taking me and Andrew completely by surprise but not off guard. The lead one swings his sword at me with such strength it takes all the power I've got in me to block it without being knocked down, the second one follows up with a sweep at my head. I am able to avoid this swipe by quickly ducking under the blade and then swiftly moving away from the two to get some ground between me and them. Andrew however, who due to being behind me was more prepared for the attack, was able to parry the third goblins attack on him and deftly continue with a wide open sweep aimed at the goblins neck. The Goblin takes the full brunt of the blow and is knocked straight to the ground with about half of its HP remaining.

Now that the initial surprise attack was over I sized up my opponents and ran at the two Goblins which had attacked me and stabbed the first one in the stomach killing it straight off and then dragging my sword from the now falling body of the dead Goblin swept my sword at the neck of the lead Goblin decapitating it with a clean cut through it's neck bone and greasy flesh. The head rolled off of the dead Goblin's neck and the headless body fell to the ground where it exploded into dark green particles. Andrew, beside me had continued with his counter attack using his sheer speed to dodge around the Goblins sword and then to deliver two fatal stabbing blows to the Goblin's with his rapier ending his enemy.

Now with the Goblins dead we continued down the wide cave with great caution waiting a few moments after each step. We continued this with no sight of any monsters until we reached another entrance into a completely circular room with damaged and mossy pillars of granite holding the ceiling up. At the other side of the room to us stood a perfect and magnificently carved white marble table, however behind this table sat I large dark green skinned Orc wearing a black metal scale mail shirt torn and bloody leather trousers and an intimidating iron helmet engraved with runes promising death. This Orc sat upon a throne of the bones that had been ripped cruelly from the flesh of his now dead enemies. When we slowly walked into the room two braziers attached to the wall behind the Orc lit up in flames and the Orc raised it's head to see us standing at the entrance to it's home, armed and prepared to kill. He rose from his throne of bleached bones and drew a black Katana, with a ruby encrusting at the hilt, from it's black Saya on it's belt. He then gave out a tremendous war cry and raised his sword high into the air.

A moment after the Orc's war cry at least 6 Goblins appeared out of nowhere from behind the pillars and were on us in a second. Since our last battle went so well after we recovered from the initial surprise we charged straight at these new foes fully prepared. I took on 4 Goblins while Andrew took on the other two, I was madly swinging my sword from one place to another to block their attacks before going in for a quick jab to their stomachs for damage whereas Andrew, to my right hand side, was deftly dodging around his opponents and landing many more, however weaker, hits upon the two Goblins he fought. About 20 seconds into the fight Andrew had dispatched his opponents and I had taken down three of my own, the last Goblin fell by a powerful sword sweep by me to it's stomach and by having Andrew's sword rammed through the back of it's neck.

With these Goblins out of the way we walked forward into the centre of the room keeping a close watch on the Orc who had yet to move during the whole fight. "Something's wrong, why isn't he attacking?" I thought to myself before seeing a smug grin that had now spread across the Orc's face. I quickly turned my head round to see that even more Goblins had spawned in and were now practically surrounding us with a circular movement.

"Back to back." I order Andrew hurriedly now realising that the chances of success were low. As we stood back to back, swords raised, the Goblins circled round us and got closer and closer with each rotation. When some had got close enough both me and Andrew attempted to hit them but they simply jumped back and completely avoiding our attack.

"To the death or do we make a charge to the exit?" I ask Andrew with a fiery determination which had begun to rise up within me these past few months.

However before Andrew could reply I heard a new battle cry of a player come from the entrance, I whipped my head around to see a green glowing battle axe sweeping through the bodies of three Goblins killing them in that one hit. The Goblins confused at what was going on saw a new attacker who posed more of a threat and charged at him leaving me and Andrew free from the trap we were just in.

"GO HELP HIM! THAT ORC IS MINE!" I shout to Andrew who promptly nods his head and goes to the aid of the our now outnumbered saviour. I turned to face the Orc captain who was baring his teeth savagely at me and charged with no care of my own safety. I swung my sword at it as soon as I got in range, it was blocked and then quickly followed up with a swing to my chest which I skillfully blocked before bringing my sword up and smashing it into the lower jaw of my enemy and then jumping back to prepare another charge. The blow that had connected made the Orc stagger back a few paces and loosen it's grip on the sword it wielded, this gave me enough time to charge back in and cut down at it's left shoulder. The blow connected and ripped off the Orc's entire left arm, the Orc violently screamed in pain and wrath. Without care for style or finesse the Orc began to wildly swing it's sword at me with tremendous force which smashed into my blocks creating virtual sparks between the two blades. I went in for a stab at it's unguarded neck to finish off this elite monster, but I had misjudged his sword lunge and instead of harmlessly going past me the blade cut deeply into my exposed stomach sending bright red particles out of my body and cutting my hp down by a quarter. The shock of getting hit was quickly drowned by fury which I channeled into my next strike which found it's mark by ripping through the flesh around the neck of the Orc and then cutting up from under the helmet which cut the Orc's head in half and knocking it's helmet into the wall where it clattered loudly and then fell with a thud. The mutilated Orc dropped it's sword on the ground before dropping to it's knees and bursting into hundreds of dark green particles.

Without a care for the victory panel in front of me I turned to rejoin the fight against the Goblin's who seemed now to have stop spawning. I charged into the fight slicing rapidly at anything I saw with green flesh and decapitating any that got to close. The last of the goblins, seeing that it had no chance of living, turned to run but was blocked by another figure who smashed his shield into it's face before brutally stabbing his sword through the stunned Goblin. The swordsman wore a red shirt and had a chest plate of iron, he had short spiky brown hair and kind blue eyes. The tall axe man was in a green shirt and wore a steel chest plate and leather gloves, he had short black hair and determination in his eyes. I looked at the two in shock and disbelief and as I looked between the two both of them wore smug smiles as they watched my confusion.


	5. Chapter 5

"Did you honestly think that we would miss this fight Steven." Said the tall one looking directly at me.

"Yer, you've known us long enough to know that we were gonna get our hands on this game one way or another." The other said to me as he sheathed his sword and leaned his shield against the wall.

"WHAT THE BLOODY HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE!?" I shouted in astonishment at my two oldest friends from the real world, I had known Oliver scales and Andrew Bubb for most of my life and regarded them for a long time as my best friends. I had thought for all this time that only me and the shorter curly haired Andrew, that stood beside me in shock at seeing people he knew to be my friends, were the only ones in this grand game of chess. But no these two people had come through to the virtual world as well as us and were now in the same situation, a true hope of survival rose within me now I had three friends who I trusted with my life and was ready to die for them.

"Well we saw you walking down towards these mountains and decided to follow to try meet up. But by the time we reached the mountains you were already halfway up the path. So we followed and found that you were in a bit of trouble with the Goblins, soooooo we decided to give you a bit of help." The tall one named Oliver answered my shouted question as he strapped his axe to his back.

"Just in time by the look of it as well." Commented the shorter one named Andrew.

"And many thanks for that as well, but now lets party up and get the hell off this mountain before night. We can talk when we've set up camp." I say seriously when I remember the danger these mountains might pose during the night.

"All ways were the kill joy weren't you Steven." Oliver says with a laugh remembering how in the real world for a long time I was stiffly serious all the time.

"Oh, shut up Torinn." I respond using Oliver's in-game name which was now above his HP bar on my U.I. above Andrew's in-game name being Adrin. "And seriously what the hell kinda names are they?" I ask the two after thinking of what they could mean with no success.

"Just random names from an old game I used to play as we couldn't think of any good ones ourselves." Oliver replied without hesitation as if expecting me to ask this question.

"Right." I say quietly before walking out of the cave with my trusted friends behind me. It took about 40 minutes to scale down the mountain and only a few words are passed between us, it takes a further 20 minutes to find suitable flat ground just outside the mountain range to set up a camp and then actually set it up. By now the sun was setting and the sky had become a gentle shade of orange.

As we sat round the large roaring fire which me and Oliver had brought to life we began talking about our experiences in this world. Oliver and Andrew's time in SAO started off a lot like my one, fighting with a vengeance to get through the first floor. However they had lived in a town further away from the front lines and therefore only fought at the front line on occasion and mostly grinded on a number of lower level monsters and repeatable quests. However they had heard word that an organised boss battle was to occur and so the two decided to make the journey to the front line to join the battle, however when they arrived the battle had ended long before. Seeing no point in staying on floor one they went through the floor door and came out on the same cliff side which we had and when picking a route they unmistakably saw me and Andrew in the distance fighting the ox monsters and decided to follow.

"Then we came into the cave where I charged the Goblins while Andrew guarded the entrance stopping anything getting out or in. So after all of that did anyone get any useful loot as all the goblins dropped was some iron which I can't actually use." Oliver finished off. We all looked in our inventories and I found that I had the scale mail shirt and sword of the Orc that I had killed, seeing I had it I decide to equip it to show the rest. The white steel scale mail shirt replaced my chest plate, it was a simple shirt but protective and allowed me to move around easier than with my chest plate. The sword however was more interesting it had a black silk saya with a red ruby dragon encrusted under the cross guard, as I drew Black Cloud from it's Saya we saw that it was a smoky black blade with the blade being sharp enough to seeming cut through anything, the usual flat side of the Katana was finely serrated giving me two lethal way to use it. This had to be one of a few swords like this in the whole game and with this tier of rarity came a great power with the sword, the sword had an attack stat way beyond anything I had seen and it's defence was a bit higher than the sword I used to kill Black Cloud's previous master.

"WOAH! That sword is a bit over kill don't you think, for this floor at least." Andrew B. said when I passed it over to him so he could see it more closely.

"Overkill maybe, but this beauty is going to last a long time and will be useful for at least 50 floors if I can get it buffed by a good blacksmith or I could enchant it or simply do both." I say thoughtfully as the sword was passed between my friends who were amazed at the beauty of the sword but the brutality and damage that it could inflict from one swing.

"So how rare do you think that sword really is Olly, as you're the expert on rarity." Andrew B asked Oliver who sat next to him. Oliver opened up the stats panel of the sword which had an extra tab which allowed him to appraise the sword, a skill belonging to merchants or weapon experts. He pressed the appraisal button and after a few moments of what looked like the system gathering info on the sword he reached his verdict.

"Well the sword is extremely rare as it is a one of a kind and is worth around a mega col in normal shops and about 1 and a half mega col to people who know what this sword really is. Now you know about it's ability to do more damage to any creatures of darkness, well it has another hidden ability. When or should I say if, a vial of dragon blood, which itself is an exceedingly rare item, is combined with the sword through a blacksmith the sword transforms into a much more powerful version of itself." He related to us stunned at the weapon he was currently holding in front of him.

"Sooooo, in other words, it's extremely overpowered and is worth more than anything any of us have seen before combined." I say in disbelief as I accepted the sword back from Oliver's appraisal.

"Basically, yer." he replies simply before bidding us goodnight and then retreating to his tent. Not long after Andrew B does the same and leaves me an Andrew sitting by the fire alone. I look into the dying embers of our grand fire mesmerised at how real it all looks, not virtual, not fantasy and not imagination, in this world everything was now real. I looked up into the night sky and saw the glowing white moon high in the sky shining it's light over the vast mountain range and valleys under it. The stars in the sky glittered in the blackness in the eternal constellations I had learned many years ago, no matter where I was the same stars looked down upon me as a burning reminder of the light within all darkness showing me that anything in this universe was possible, as long as we fought for it.

"The murmuring of summer grass, all that is left of the warrior's dream." I say aloud remembering an old Haiku I had read in a book.

"Which means what exactly?" Andrew, who had obviously heard me, asked me with a quizzical look upon his face.

"In this world all that is left of the dream we had of this virtual reality are gone except for the murmuring grass around us." I say back quietly, knowing that he would never actually understand the meaning of the poem. The poem describes a soldier's dreams of a battle shattered when he truly fight his enemies on the field where the cold steel of a sword cares not for who you are only that you bleed and die upon the fields of grass.

"How many people do you think are going to get out of here Andrew?" I ask solemnly with thoughts of death and despair going through my mind.

"I don't know, I just don't know." he replies quietly as any remaining visions of this world begin just a game are shattered by my words. At this he gets up and goes to his tent so he can get some rest for the next day's trek. Now alone outside next to the now faintly glowing ashes I get up, un-sheath my new sword and walk off into the darkness of the mountain range leaving the camp behind me without a look back.

That night I walked through the mountain valleys encountering all kinds of creatures spawned from the darkness within this range. Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins and stone Golems all fall to the my blood lusty blade which hacked, sliced and stabbed mercilessly at my foes. The blade never wearied in it's fight, never blunting, cracking or chipping as blood quenched the thirst of the cold steel.

It was morning by the time I arrived back at the camp tired and any lust for battle no longer existent. When I reached the tents I see that my three friends had been looking for me worriedly after finding an empty tent when they had woken up to cook breakfast.

"Where have you been then?" Asked Andrew more relieved to see me than angry at my disappearance.

"Was out training with my new sword." I reply vaguely not wishing to relive the events that night where the darkness within the blade overwhelmed my sense and plunging me into pointless bloody battles before being able to control my actions and therefore taming the sword. After saying this I walk straight into my tent and fall forward onto my makeshift bed and instantly fall asleep.

When I wake after another sleep of tormenting nightmares I hear voices outside talking in serious tones, so I decide to listen in for a bit before coming out of my tent.

"But why was he out all night, I mean a bit of training is okay but a whole night alone is just dangerous here." I hear Andrew saying in a worried voice.

"Well he came back alive so that proves that he isn't going down that easily, however I agree that no matter how skilled he may be he can still die out there on his own." I hear Oliver agree with obvious thought put into what he had just said.

"So what are we supposed to do anyway? None of us can stop him so stop worrying about it, he's not stupid enough to get himself killed. Now lets plan what to do today. Do we stick through the mountain passes, go over the the valley areas or pick a direction and walk?" Andrew B says to the other two with finality.

"Well Steven probably cleared the pass out last night and found nothing to interesting so why don't we go back and go over to the low lying valley area today, there might be a town somewhere around there as well." Oliver says after a few seconds of thought. The other two agree to this and then I hear the three of them begin to cook a breakfast of eggs, bacon and sausages. A few minutes later I decide to get up and out of my tent.

"Hope you cooked something for me as well." I say to the two Andrews sitting by the fire cooking.

"Good job we remembered about you then isn't it." Andrew replies captiously looking at me. I see him doing this and just shake my head and then plonk myself down in front of the fire and gaze into the ever changing and moving flames and embers that made up the fire.

A few minutes later we all sat down and had our small, cooked breakfast in silence before dismantling the camp and then beginning our walk to the large low lying valley area which we saw when we entered the floor. We trek on the few dirt paths that we find and most of the time we walk cross country until we reach a hill which over looks a medium sized town which laid on an excavated flat topped mountain.

The town had very drab buildings which each had a uniformed height to them. As we walked into the town I opened up my map and found out that this town was named Urbus. The city wasn't too interesting and didn't have many shops and only a low level blacksmith. However there was a few item fetching or specific monster hunting quests.

This is how we spent the next few days on the second floor, we stayed at an inn during the night and completed these quests or out fighting monsters to find the boss room. One of the monster killing quests gave us all a martial arts skill when we completed it allowing us to fight our enemies unarmed in extreme cases but it also allowed us to train our base strength and dexterity faster than if we used our weapons.

On the fifth day after completing all of the quests in the town and were beginning to get bored of this town life we found the boss room. We were on the 23rd floor of the dungeon tower which was a large dark cave system which had Goblin and lizard creatures throughout. The boss room came in the form of a formidable tall, solid and thick rusty iron. The door bore runes which none of us could read.

We all pushed hard against the door to open it, the door slowly opened with a creak and revealed a large circular room with a domed stone roof, running along the walls were pillars which went up all the way to the top where they all met up at one small point directly above the centre of the room. The boss stood directly under this meeting of the pillars in the centre of the now lit boss room.


	6. Chapter 6

The boss was a large red skinned demon with large twisting horns and smoky black hair around his face and head. He wore two golden arm bracers with one reinforced with leather padding, he held a huge golden plated hammer with a cylindrical head with two flat faces to it and a staff of white wood reinforced with steel.

"Want a go at this guy alone?" I ask the my friends who stood by my side taking in every detail of the boss that stood before us.

"Why not, we're high enough levels and combined we can keep each other alive. Any way if we start to loose we can just run out of the room and try again later." Oliver answers decisively. We all draw our weapons and begin to walk into the room while instantly taking our practiced battle formation, me and Andrew B at the front to take the initial attacks and do as much damage as possible and to have Andrew and Oliver switching into the battle when the enemy is occupied with either me or Andrew B, this took advantage of Andrew's speed and Oliver's flanking damage. If this strategy would work against a boss, however, was yet to be seen.

As we got closer to the boss it raised it's head and it's name and four health bars were now visible, it was called Baran the General Taurus. Suddenly it charged forward with tremendous speed with it's heavy hammer held high. Me and Andrew B counter charged the boss and we were just able to raise our blocks before it dropped it's hammer upon us. The attack, aimed at me, came down with a thud after I deftly dodged it's path and then swinging my sword at the beast's flank cutting through it's flesh and but doing only a small amount of damage. Meanwhile both Andrews had taken this opportunity to attack the boss with more power and accuracy than I was able to achieve and their combined hits to it's chest the boss stumbled back with half a bar of health now gone. Oliver and me then went on the offensive with me jumping up and stabbing hard at it's sword arm's shoulder while Oliver went for it's legs. However after our attacks hit home the beast gave out a howl of fury and took one of his hands from it's hammer's staff and used it to punch me with extreme power and knocking me to the other side of the room. The combined force of the strike and the impact of the stone ground cut out a large chunk of my health and winded me. When I was finally able to stand back up with my black sword as a support I saw that my friends were agilely avoiding the Boss's wild swings with a variety of evading manoeuvres before quickly moving back in to land a hit or two and then move out again. Even though I could still feel the dull pain of the boss's hit in my chest and stomach I charged into the fight to rejoin my friends who were slowly but surely taking down the boss's health. I followed the example of my friends and without getting as close as I had before I started dealing a lot of damage without taking any.

When we began to think that this was going to be an easy fight, Baran hit half health and therefore his battle flow changed. He threw his Hammer at us, the swinging head and staff of the hammer flew at us and barely missed us before smashing into the wall and then falling to the ground. He then charged at us head first which hit both Andrew and Oliver to the ground with it's horns, it then span on the spot and punched Andrew B across the room as it had earlier done to me. It then turned to me and lowered it's head in preparation for another horn charge. As it charged at me I ran at it and at the last second jumped into the air, turned and stabbed my sword hard down onto it's wide back. The beast raised it's head and tried to hit me off of its back, however I turned my blade upside down and began to cut down it's back with the serrated edge of my sword. A few seconds of this and the boss's swings had come extremely close to hitting me off so I decided to kick off from it's back where I landed heavily on the ground.

I looked up by the boss's head and it was now in red health. It quickly turned to face me and started to violently strike at me with all the power it could muster, these attacks seemed impossible to block so I was left with just evasion. However this didn't last long as my three friends were now up and running back into the fight. Oliver span around and threw his axe which planted itself into the neck of the boss, Andrew had came in from the side and with a jump stabbed rapidly at the boss's arm while Andrew B came from the other side and had begun to slash at the boss's side.

The boss changed it's target and swung it's arm round hitting Andrew B's shield and missing Andrew who had quickly jumped back away from the hit. Now the boss had turned it's back to me in it's failed attempt to hit it's new attackers, I took this opportunity to charge back at it and summoning up my strongest sword skill I ran past the beast leaving a deep wound across it's whole side. I turned to see the boss fall backwards, defeated and explode into hundreds of particles.

A large white "Congratulations!" appeared in the sky and each of our drop panels opened up in front of us. We all looked down, exhausted yet relieved, at our panels. I saw that I had obtained the Boss' hammer weapon and a good amount of Col which would last me a while. I looked back up at the other three to see them sheathing their weapons and walking to the central area of the room before they all sat down to regain some energy before we entered the next floor.

I walked over to them while sheathing my sword and asked "Anything interesting dropped for you?" they look at me and shake their heads, I look at Oliver and direct my words to him "I got his hammer, but as I'm not going to use it do you want it?" I ask him.

"Sure, why not. I've been needing to get a higher level weapon for a while now as well." He replies after looking down at his axe for a few seconds. So I quickly trade him the hammer which he then quickly goes to equip. It was large had two circular flat ends on the silver coloured cylindrical head and a white wood staff handle which made the weapon as tall as Oliver.

I then turn my attention to the large, polished, dark wooden door with a large brass door knob on the other side of the room and begin to walk towards it. When I reached it I slowly opened it up to see the luminous shifting whiteness of the floor portal and with a quick look back at the others I walk through it.


	7. Chapter 7

BEEP BEEP BEEP! By the side of my bed on a simple wooden cupboard my high pitched alarm was going off in my ear, 7:00 AM July 26th. It had been six months since me and my three loyal friends had defeated the second floor boss and seven months since this entire death trap closed itself around the 10,000 players which had entered it. I was in my large and luxurious log cabin, which cost most of the money I had saved up in the game, in the 22nd floor of Aincrad. The floor was in my opinion the best we had yet to find, it was a floor of sheer beauty containing large green pine forests and a number of large shimmering lakes.

As I woke up I slowly came to my senses, turned off my beeping alarm clock and sat up and looked out the open window to my side. It was yet another stunningly bright day outside where birds could be heard singing and the smells of the luscious plant life could be smelt upon the gentle breeze. I got out of my soft bed with a stretch and a long yawn and slowly plodded to the kitchen to make myself a cooked breakfast consisting of a chicken like meat and toast. As I sat down at the finely carved and polished mahogany table I thought about my plans for the day. I wasn't on front line duty for another week and I had been down to the floor dungeon most of the week, so I eventually decided that I would go for a long walk through the forests.

Within the 8 months of the game people had started to accept and get used to life in Aincrad, with some preferring it to real life, and the fiery determination to clear the game and outright fury at Kayaba Akihiko had already began to fade a little. I was one of those who preferred this virtual world to reality, it's unbelievable scenery, unlimited possibilities, endless adventures and few limitations to what a person could do had drawn me solidly to life in here and unlike most of the time in the real world I was happy and content with my way of life.

After eating I got up and changed into a simple dark red shirt, blue trousers and thick leather hiking boots. No weapons or any kind of armour, I wouldn't be needing those today. I went to the thick oaken door, opened it and walked out into the fresh air and sunshine which seemed to never vanish from this floor. To my left was the vastly stretching dark green pine forests and to my right was a large lake at the bottom of a large mountainside waterfall which shimmered in the sunlight. I walked down from the front of my house and onto the dirt path and walked into the direction of the vast forests.

About 20 minutes into my walk my menu panel opened up and showed me that I had received a short voice message from Andrew. I stopped walking and wondered if it was that important, but on the end I decided that I had better hear it now or I would almost certainly forget about it by the time I had finished my walk.

"Hey Steven, meet me down at my house on the 18th floor I want to talk to you about some things." I hear Andrew's voice say from the panel in front of me. I roll my eyes a the message, "what could he want now." I think irritated at always being interrupted whenever I'm at home. But however much his summons annoy me I'm curious about what he wants to talk about so, reluctantly, I begin the short walk to the floor portal.

Near to 10 minutes later I reach my destination. The floor portal was in a large perfectly circular clearing in the forest and was a white granite circle with 2 stairs leading up to the central section, it had a white marble archway over it with a sphere of distorted, light blue, space covering the area of the portal base. The floor portal allows players to teleport freely between any of the cleared floors by simply naming the place you want to go.

"Floor 18." I say clearly once I'm standing in the centre of the portal base. Immediately the space around me gets engulfed in an electric blue and white light signalling the teleportation. A few seconds later the engulfing light begins to recede and I begin to see the rolling hills, flower filled plains and a number of golden yellow, soft red and muted brown leaved oak and elm forests. I was standing on another portal base similar to the one on the 22nd floor apart from a more intricately carved stonework surrounding me.

I walked down from the portal base and turned around to see a spread out village which consisted of large thatched roofed cottages connected together by a number of cobble streets. Nearer to the centre of the village the buildings drew closer together and formed a large town centre where shops of every kind were established and prospering. My destination, Andrew's house, was on the far side of the village in one of the out-skirt areas of the village much nearer to the wilderness that this floor presented.

Andrew's house, like the others was a white painted wooden cottage with a thatched roof, there was a few windows on each floor looking out towards the town and the door was made from birch wood with a brass knocker in the shape of an eagle. As I walked towards the house I noticed that the curtains were still closed and no light could be seen coming from the house. When I reached the door I banged on the door with the brass eagle, which created a loud thud each time it hit, and waited for Andrew to open the door.

Half a minute later the door opened inwards to reveal the inside of the house and Andrew. He wore a simple dark blue shirt and black trousers, he had obviously not been awake for too long as his hair was a mess and I saw him yawn as he opened the door.

"Hi Andrew." I say before he returns my greeting and we both walk back inside the house towards the large furnished living room lit by a crystal chandelier in the centre of the room as Andrew closes the front door with a soft thud and click of the lock. I went and sat down in one of the oaken chairs which stood by a large mahogany table. When Andrew entered the room he sat down by the table in the chair opposite me.

"So what is it you wanted to talk about." I say getting straight down to the point of me being here.

"Well so much for formalities then." Andrew replies with a a slight shake of his head. "Well I was thinking about starting a guild for us four and anyone else who want to join." when I just stare at him indifferently without saying anything he goes on "I know you don't really like the idea of being in a big official party of sorts but most of the people in the front line are in guilds and when they band together and organise themselves they can clear and map out a whole floor within a day or two, taking all the glory and loot with them. Us lot are just a small band of solo players who can't do much up in those higher dungeons on our own."

"Wait a sec, we can't do anything on our own?" I say sarcastically "Last time we were all together on the front line we did a good days work up there and mapped out a good section for the rest of the liners to go by. Just because we can't take on the big floor bosses alone doesn't mean we can't do things on the front line." I continue with irritation in my voice.

"That may be so, but think about it Steven, what's going to happen on the higher floors around the 60s to 70s that's going to be pretty hard for a group of people who get the left over items from the big guilds. Then we have the fact that we have to be in a constant party most of the time which stops us from joining any other parties whereas a guild would be a permanent and official party which still allows secondary parties to be joined. Also with a guild we can sort out item management and trading easier than the usual of us constantly trading." He responds with equal irritation and determination.

"I take it from the number of reasons you've gathered, you've spoken with Andrew and Oliver already." I comment slowly before looking out the window at the expansive fields which lay to this side of the house.

"Yes, I have spoken to them and both of them agree to the idea and I left you till last as I knew you would be the hardest to persuade because you are so damn stubborn and thick headed all the time." He answered with annoyance in his voice.

"Okay, okay no need to get angry with me for disagreeing to your idea. How about I help out with the guild but I wont be an official member." I say calmly, now looking back at him. "So who's going to be the guild leader then?" I ask curiously.

"Well Andrew said a complete no to it instantly but Oliver said he wouldn't mind doing it and I'm not completely sure if I should lead the guild." He answers quietly.

"Well then why don't you and Oliver have an organised duel and the winner of that becomes the leader, simple isn't it." I say calmly before getting up and walking into Andrew's medium sized kitchen for a drink of water. When I returned to the living room with a clear glass of water in my hand I see that Andrew has his menu open and is sending someone a message.

"Who you messaging." I ask with curiosity as I sit back down and place my glass on the table.

"Oliver. I'm telling him about what you said and arranging a duel with him for sometime tonight." he replies slowly only half concentrating on what he was saying.

"Why don't you do it up on my floor, there's some good places for a duel and it never really gets to cold to be outside even in the dead of night." I suggest.

"Just so that you can get back home to go to sleep quicker than the rest of us." He responds with a smile now looking up at me. "But fair enough, It's gonna be at 8 PM tonight wherever you choose." He says calmly.

"Well then want to go out and do some training with me while we wait." I ask Andrew as I get up and head towards the front door, after rolling his eyes he gets up and follows me out through the front door.


	8. Chapter 8

We stood in a large grassy clearing in the forest on the 22nd floor, the sun was nearly setting and the light of day had begun to fade to give an orange glow across the floor. Me and Andrew B were leaning on a couple trees on the outer rim of the clearing while Andrew and Oliver stood, in full armour and weapons at the ready opposite each other in the centre of the clearing. 8PM had come and I had picked one of my favourite resting spots in the forest to hold the friendly duel to decide the guild's leader. I looked up into the sky and the sun had nearly fallen below the tree line so I got up from my spot and walked towards the pair.

"Okay now, this duel is a simple friendly so don't get really competitive with it. First to hit yellow hit point looses and forfeits the right to become Guild leader. You may use any of the clearing to fight but try not to go to far into the forest if you can. Now, Andrew send Oliver a duel request and begin when you are ready." I lay out the rules and stakes before moving back to the tree line next to Andrew B. "200 col on Andrew winning." I say quietly to Andrew B.

"Agreed, 200 col for Oliver to win then." He replies confident that he would win this last second wager. We then both turn our attention back to the two duellists in front of us. A timer appeared in the air between the two and counted down the time till the fight begun from 60 seconds. Now the only sounds that could be heard was the wildlife moving around the forest and the gentle breeze blowing through the trees.

3...2...1... As soon as the timer ended the two exploded into action with stupendous speed. Within a second they had reached each other, Andrew drew his rapier back and conjured up a purple coloured skill which engulfed his blade while Oliver had brought his hammer back to the side and with a green skill with equal power he swung his hammer at Andrew. The two weapons collided mid air and an explosion of energy erupted between the two weapons forcing the two to move back from each other. A split second after they had disengaged however Andrew went straight on the attack and hurled attacks at Oliver with a lightning speed which I had never seen Andrew produce before now. Oliver was hard pressed to defend himself from these agile blows and so although he blocked a few of the hits he took a great deal of damage and was forced to move even further back.

The two stood off for a mere second before Oliver Charged headlong at Andrew spinning his hammer over his head with a great shout. He took the momentum he had built up and lowered his hammer down mid spin and planted a solid hit into Andrew's chest plate sending him flying back into the ground. Oliver pressed on and brought his hammer down upon Andrew. Luckily for Andrew he was able to roll out of harms way and quickly get to his feet. Oliver however wasn't going to give Andrew a second to recover and so continued on his attack with heavy swings which Andrew had to jump out of the way of. Andrew then jumped to Oliver's side and planted a well aimed stab with his steel rapier at the weak point in Oliver's full body armour.

Oliver quickly countered by turning round and launching his hammer at Andrew, this took him completely by surprise and so the hammer once again smashed right into Andrew's chest plate and knocking him to the ground. As the hammer dropped down to the ground Oliver drew a huge great sword from his back and charged down at his stunned enemy with a powerful crimson red skill. Andrew seeing this new weapon got to his feet and raced towards it while building up a powerful skill to match Oliver's. The two swords clashed and yet again an explosion of power erupted between the two, however neither gave the other an inch of ground to work with.

Sword clashed against sword with equal skill and power, yet neither had the upper hand over the other. Te sun had begun to truly set and the two blades were reflecting the dying light of the day. Andrew saw this and took this chance to his advantage, he angled his blade so that the reflecting light dazed Oliver for a second. This second however was long enough for Andrew, he stabbed out with his rapier mercilessly and landed a solid blow on Oliver's chest directly on the heart.

I looked up at the floating panel showing the two's health bars and saw that that last blow to Oliver had just pushed him over into yellow health. I then turned to Andrew's health bar and saw that he was practically a few hit points off of yellow HP. The duel then ended automatically with a large floating "WINNER!" above Andrew's head. At seeing this I turned to Andrew B with a cocky smile and said "200 col, thank you." Andrew B reluctantly sent me the money and we both walked over to the battleground.

"You can put your weapons away now." I say fiercely noticing the two glaring each other down with swords at the ready, still half into a battle state of mind. The two then realised it was over and only a friendly quickly let their guards down and sheathed their weapons and shook each others hands. Oliver then went to retrieve his thrown hammer which he leant upon when he returned to us.

"Well that was a pretty spectacular duel you two and I guess that decides that Andrew is going to be the guild leader." I say happy that Andrew had won the duel.

"Damn well deserves it as well after that. Never saw the blinding tactic coming at all and his speed with that rapier is just mad and congrats on winning your place as leader." Oliver comments with a laugh not holding a grudge against Andrew for beating him.

"Thanks. I'm surprised I won that to be honest as when you pulled that sword out I thought that would be then end of it all. But anyway good fight, should be interesting the next time we duel." Andrew replies with excitement and a hint of relief in his voice.

"Well I better be getting back home as travelling in the dark can get annoying with the shadow monsters on my floor." Andrew says before we say our farewells and he leaves to go to the floor portal.

"I suppose I'd better get back again, so cya and I expect to have an invite for that guild by the end of the week." He says with a mocked seriousness. After he left me and Andrew were left in the ever darkening clearing.

"See I said a duel was a good idea, didn't I." I say to Andrew with a smile looking at my still slightly ecstatic and shocked friend.

"That was the first time I've done any player versus player combat. So it could have gone either way really, I just got lucky I suppose. As how is a light weapon and armour user face up against a person with full on heavy armour and heavy weapons like Oliver's. And anyway nice spot for it, but why did you chose it to be here." He says modestly as he looked at the now dark and star filled night sky above us.

"Well I chose this spot for an actual reason you know, not just because it looked good. Each night the sun sets in approximately the same place and the light from the setting sun always falls in this circle. So hoping that one of you would pick up on this fact and use it to daze or blind the other, I chose it. And it would seem that my bet payed off pretty well, although I didn't expect Oliver to have a secondary weapon like that so I got a bit worried at that point." I say with an arrogant smile knowing that Andrew would soon realise that I had deliberately picked a place which had an advantage for the person who figured it out first. After that I began to walk back to my house with Andrew quickly following suit and joining me on the way back.

"Well now that you've finished interfering with things, what should the guild actually be called?" He asks in a contemplative voice as he thought over his decision.

I look at Andrew in disbelief and remark. "You've got this far into this guild idea and you haven't even got a name for it. Have you three even talked about what it will be called or were you to engrossed in choosing the leader and ways to make me join it." I say incredulously starting to laugh.

"Well it wasn't really that important at the time." He replies with a laugh. "But now I think about it there are a couple names I could call it." He continues once again in a contemplative way.

"Go on then, it's always interesting to hear the names you come up with." I remark thinking of all the names for groups he always used to come up with, cliche and unimaginative.

"The Golden-Oak Rangers." He says confidently after a few seconds of thinking, he then nods his head happy with the title which he had created. He then looks at me worried that I'm about to disagree with this name.

"Honestly, that is a pretty good name and the ranger part actually suits you and your battle style." I say sincerely "So I expect to see that guild up soon now that those formalities are sorted out." I continue when I see my house a small walk down the road.

"Should be up pretty soon I hope. Well cya later then" He says as I walk up the small path to my log house.

"Cya later." I return before turning my back on Andrew and walk towards my dark and empty house.


	9. Chapter 9

I swing my sword round at the young Drake, aiming to hit it's weak and soft belly where it's newly forming scales were yet to reach. My black sword hits it's mark and creates a deep cut unto the Drakes pale coloured belly and taking out a quarter of it's health. The Drake suddenly let out a great ferocious pain driven roar which echoed through the caves I was in. It then caught me by surprise by launching a dark red fireball at my feet, when the inferno ball hit the ground it exploded and launched me back into the cave wall with great force while doing a lot of damage to me. It followed up this attack by charging down at me, jaw wide open with every intention to clamp down on me.

When saw this attack approaching, I quickly raised my sword and stabbed straight into the open mouth of the Drake. The blade cut through the flesh with little problem and quickly killed the beast. Breathing heavily, still winded from the fireball attack, I got to my feet and scanned the area. I was in a large dark and wet cave system which consisted of hundreds of differently splitting corridors with the occasional circular hall.

As I started to keep moving further into the dungeon the ground began to shake slightly and I could hear noises coming from the darkness behind me. I turned around and cautiously began to walk towards the noises with my sword raised and ready to attack a a seconds notice.

Suddenly 5 fireballs of raging oranges and reds came flying at me from deep within the darkness. I was able to avoid being hit by the actual fireballs but I had to brace myself for the explosions which created a stupendous shockwave. When I looked for the source of this attack I saw 5 Young Drakes barreling down the corridor at me, summoned by the pained roar of it's now dead brother.

Knowing I had no chance of winning this fight I turned to run but I was struck down by the sharp claws of a Drake that had snuck up behind me. I was now up against 6 young Drakes on my own with a good bit of my health already gone, I had trouble fighting one one its own, now I was doomed to fail. With the prospect of imminent death very close now I went into a battle rage intent of fighting these beasts till the very bitter end.

I launched a flurry of attacks upon the the one nearest to me knocking it back and giving me room to move around. However the Drakes had now cornered me to the wall behind me by forming a line covering every route of escape. I decided to charge straight at what seemed to be the lead Drake, the biggest and most ferocious of the group and engaged it in a heated combat. However I couldn't seem to hit any of it's weak spots and therefore any damage I was able to deal was a miniscule amount.

The leader gave a roar and the other 5 began to close in on me to finish off their kill. Suddenly a spear came out of no where and embedded itself into the neck of the lead Drake, killing it off with ease. Me and the 5 Drakes stood there in shock at what just happened before 2 cloaked figures both wielding rapiers materialised from the shadows and began an onslaught of attacks on the Drakes with deadly precision.

Realising what was going on I joined my saviors in the fight and soon all of the Drakes had been slain and no more monsters seemed to be arriving. I looked at the two cloaked and hooded figures, one of which was retrieving their thrown spear, with a hard yet curious stare.

"And who do I have the pleasure of thanking?" I ask with a heavy posh British accent and keeping a wary distance from the two. The two look at each other and the slightly taller of the two gives a quick nod. At this they both turn back to me and lower their hoods.

The first one I see, the slightly shorter one, was a Girl no younger than I was. She had long straight brown hair falling down to below her shoulders, she had a kind and caring face with blue eyes and light pink rose petal lips. She wore a light green shirt patterned with differently coloured leaves under the dark gray cloak. She was smiling at me seeing my unexpected shock of seeing a girl with such fighting skills.

I then turned to see Andrew looking at me with an extremely smug grin while he leaned on his spear. On seeing him my shocked face disappeared and a look of irritation came across my face.

"You are never going to let me forget this now are you." I say bitterly knowing that he would always bring up this event if he ever needed any help or just to show that I'm not as strong as I may think I am.

When I say this Andrew begins to laugh and replies shortly. "Never." He then turns to his friend "Woods this is Aurora, the newest member of the Golden-Oak Rangers." I look at Andrew for a split second confused when he uses my in game name before turning back to look at Aurora. "Aurora, this is Woods, one of my friends in Aincrad from the real world and an arrogant one at that." He ends with a smile.

I look at Andrew again and say "Just because I prefer to fight solo doesn't mean I'm arrogant. I haven't been truly arrogant since back at school." I turn back to Aurora and say "Good to meet you Aurora and thanks for the rescue back there, I've been having problems with those damned drakes for a while now."

"No problem, but its good to finally meet the famous Woods and to show him up at the same time." she says calmly and with a hint of pride.

""Famous Woods"" I repeat turning to Andrew wondering what he's said about me.

"Well yer, your sort of a known front liner and considering how long we were a fighting pair back in the day its kind of hard to miss you out when talking about the lower floors." He says with a faked innocent smile.

"Anyway how did you two meet and get her into the guild." I ask curiously knowing that Andrew isn't particularly the best at talking to girls.

"Well I was up on the 26th floor doing a bit of training and item farming to help out with Torinn's shop on the 29th floor a week ago." It takes me a few seconds to place the in game name but I realise that he's talking about Oliver. He had set up a high tier weapon shop up on the 29th floor to help the front liners and lower levels get weapons without risking death. "When I saw Aurora having some trouble with some Goblin marauders in the underground kingdom section, so I went in and helped her out."

"Bit more than just helping out, you saved my life down there. Those Goblins would have surrounded me completely and killed me within seconds if you hadn't turned up." Aurora corrected Andrew before he could continue.

"Well yer, anyway so I got her back up to the town safe zone where I asked if she was part of a party or any guild." He continued his story seemingly skipping over most of the details.

Yet again Aurora started speaking before Andrew could continue. "And as I wasn't part of any and I knew nobody in Aincrad I said I would join. From there I joined the Rangers and begun my training with Terra so that I could stand my ground on my own if needed."

"Fair enough, the Rangers are pretty small right now so a few new people is a good thing." I say now knowing the story of her joining. "What I want to know is how you knew I was up here and that I was in trouble with those Drakes, or at least how long have you been up here." I ask curiously now leaning on the wall behind me.

"Well, I can see where you are from my friends list and I knew you were on Front line duty today so it was almost certain that you would be deep in the 32nd floor caves, which you were. So for a bit of training and experience for Aurora, as she's never been to the frontline, I decided that it would be good to come down here and join up with you. So we were a good distance down the tunnel from here when we heard a loud Drake roar coming from this direction, I knew that this was likely to be your doing so we followed the direction of the noise. When we reached you you were surrounded by the Drakes. So we activated our sneak ability and waited in the shadows for the right time to attack and to see how you would handle the fight and I must say that you went a bit mad on that Drake leader." He recounted the events at a speed which I could understand and quick enough so that we wouldn't be here all day.

"Well good job you turned up when you did, now lets get out of here I've mapped out my designated area so I can bunk off duty for the rest of today." I say before getting up and walking back into the darkness towards the place where I knew the entrance would be. The two followed behind me, keeping to the shadows at all times. However it was not needed as 20 minutes later we left the cave system without meeting any enemies.

I turn back to the two which now walked behind me and begun walking backwards through the flat grassy fields which filled the floor. "So where do you live then? As my house is down in the 22nd floor and Terra's is on the 18th floor." I ask Aurora curiously without trying to be intrusive on her privacy.

"Well... I don't actually have a house." she replies embarrassed looking down and avoiding eye contact "I've always wanted a house near the front lines but I never seem to be able to get the money for it and you lot steam through the floors so fast I haven't had much chance to save for a frontal house. So usually I sleep in the closest inn to where I was or set up a tent to sleep in."

"Why don't you move in with Terra then, he's got a big enough house considering the fact that he lives alone." I say while looking at my bewildered and caught of guard friend. Aurora gives Andrew a questioning look and I see that she is smiling slightly at the idea.

"Well I don't see why not, I have two large bedrooms in my house." He says slowly, thinking it over as he spoke. This brought a great smile upon Aurora's face however Andrew was glaring at me for springing this on him so suddenly. I began laughing and turned around to see that we had reached the floor's town and the floor portal.

"Really Steven, you just had to do that didn't you." Andrew spoke annoyed at me. It was late evening and after he and Aurora had gone home and he had shown her round Andrew had instantly came to my house to talk.

"Oh, come on Andrew don't complain. For God's sake are you blind, she really likes you and to be honest you like her a lot as well. And anyway your house is big and since you don't have a guild base yet you can't exactly leave her in the wild or in an inn forever can you." I say laughingly, not taking Andrew's annoyance seriously at all, for I knew that it wouldn't last.

"That may be true." He retorted embarrassed and beginning to go red in the cheeks. "But you just had to interfere didn't you, as usual." His annoyance was already starting to fade.

"Now off that, sensitive subject, why were we using IGNs instead of our actual names?" I change the subject quickly before the previous subject changed direction, which it easily could have done.

"Well we are in a game and practically everyone uses IGNs as, really, we aren't supposed to use our real names even if other people know them. Like in the front liners meetings, do people call you by your real name." He answers as if it was completely obvious.

"At meetings, no they don't. But that's because I don't really know any of them personally. Whereas people who I can trust and know a bit more use my name because it's easier and IGNs are just too formal in my opinion." I reply with a calm voice and steady pace. I then see Andrew shaking his head at me with a look of defeat.

"Is there literally any way to persuade you of things." he says with disbelief knowing that if he pressed the matter any more that he would get no where with me.

"Nope, I'm too thickheaded and stubborn to be persuaded." I say with a grin. "But I see that your speed and shadow training has been going well." I say remembering the speed at which Andrew's blade soared through the air with unbelievable precision after he had appeared from the darkness.

"Yer, it's going good but some of the main front liners are much better than me, like the lightning flash. She's probably the fastest blade in the whole of Aincrad at the moment." He replies.

"Hmmm, I know her, second in command of the blood knights. She can get annoying sometimes with the way she orders everyone around as if we all ought to be out on the front line all the time." I saw bringing forth the image of the lightning flash Asuna who was the second in command of the most powerful front line guild in Aincrad, The Knights of The Blood Oath.

"Well I better get back home." He suddenly said after looking outside at the dark night and checking the time in his menu. At this he got up from the table we had been sitting at and moved towards the front door.

"I'll see you whenever then, I'm up on the front line most of the week so you know where to find me." I tell Andrew as I open the door and watch him walk onto the dark path with a farewell wave. I closed the door and walked back to the dining room and sat back down in my chair.


	10. Chapter 10

Our swords clashed against each other neither able to get through the others defence. My opponent suddenly switched from aggressive attacks to fast precision attacks launched at me from a variety of different directions and angles, however each of them sailed past me as I ducked, swerved and jumped out of the way of the blade.

I then went on the attack and with two powerful hits to the top of my opponents blade I disarmed my enemy. Her rapier fell to the grassy floor leaving her weaponless and therefore defeated. I sheathed my sword and waited for Aurora to pick up her sword before I commented on the training fight.

"You have a good speed with your attacks and you can throw a pretty hard hit as well, but your attacks are pretty predictable and your reaction time when getting attacked is a bit slow. However you are actually better than I had expected and you seem to be learning a lot from Andrew's speed training" I tell Aurora her performance during the fight. She had come and asked me for some training sessions so that she could learn techniques and skills from another front liner to make her ready to go it alone in the front dungeon like I regularly do.

"So I need to become more unpredictable and faster at reacting." She says taking on my given advice quickly and understanding why I had said it.

"Yer basically that's all I can see that could bring you down up on the front. Your attacks can be predicted somewhat easily and so monsters will be able to block or plain out counter your attacks and if you have a split second to block or move from an attack you need to have a good reaction speed to do so. But in player versus player situations I would say to run as a human is much smarter than most of the monsters up there." I add to my initial comments to explain them in more detail.

"And why do you think I'm not up for PvP? I may have, well, flaws in my technique but I can still hold my own against some one." She asks me, her pride now slightly hurt.

"I'll put it this way, I was going easy on you just then and within 2 seconds of me wanting it to end I disarmed you. Up against more serious players you will get destroyed and if it's a player killer they will show you no mercy and will have back up waiting somewhere to finish you off if needed." I reply patiently. "If you want me to demonstrate a serious fighter just say."

"Go on then." She says confidently. I sigh, already knowing who would win this fight. I draw my trusted black katana and hold it's tip level with the tip of Aurora's white rapier and waited for her to make the first move.

She opens up the fight by charging down at me with her sword drawn back in the same way I've seen Andrew do many a time. I angle my blade preparing to block the attack when I see her jump past me, spin her blade around in her hand and strike me in the back. This hit knocks me back a bit and forces me to reassess my opponents true ability.

I turn and charge down at her with two hands on my sword's grip to deliver a more powerful blow. I swing my sword downwards upon her, she easily dodges this attack but doesn't realise that mid swing I had changed the trajectory of my sword and the blade crashes into her side light metal armor and knocking her to the ground.

She quickly scrambles to her feet as I move towards her with my sword raised for the finishing attack. However my powerful strike smashes into her weak last second block and her sword flies from her hand and down into the grass once more. I move my sword tip to her neck signaling what I thought to be the end of the duel.

However she grabbed the blade with the palms of her hands and kicked out at my hand with stupendous speed and power. This completely takes me off guard and I drop my sword to the ground due to the sharp pain that had spiked into my relaxing hand.

We were now both un-armed, Aurora took my momentary shock to her advantage and barreled into me and committed to a powerful shoulder attack which connected with my chest plate and knocked me to the ground. A split second after I had hit the ground she went and picked up my sword with the intention of using it against me.

Seeing this I got back up and waited for the next move, knowing that I couldn't attack with out getting impaled or cut by my own sword. Aurora then went back on the offensive against me. She raised my sword high above her head and brought it down upon me.

I raised my crossed arms in a defensive way in front of my face, this saved me the fight. My arm bracers took the whole impact and blocked the blade from hitting my body or head. I quickly followed up by twisting my arms and therefore twisting the blade out of her hands and back onto the ground. I then drew a large curved dagger from a scabbard on the back of my belt, I charged Aurora down and onto the ground where I placed the sharp dagger on her neck.

"I win." I say fiercely before getting back to my feet, putting away my emergency dagger and went to retrieve my sword. I turned back to see Aurora already on her feet and sheathing her rapier. "Now where the hell did you learn to do that." I ask still shocked at the disarming technique she had used against me.

"Well I didn't really learn it anywhere it just came to me and it seems to have worked pretty well. So now Woods did you expect that at all?" She replies smugly knowing that she had completely surprised me and had made less predictable attacks as I had advised her to do earlier.

"No, I didn't expect that to happen at all, well done and don't call me Woods I do have an actual name. Steven." I say with irritation at the use of my IGN and still annoyed for nearly loosing the fight. "So what does Terra actually teach you and how does he do it?" I ask curious of my friends teaching techniques.

"A lot of running while dodging things and hitting fast moving targets. Gets a bit tiring and tedious after a while but it does help my accuracy and speed." She replies as she sits down on the dry grassy ground and taking out some food and drink from her inventory.

"Ok, how about after we eat, I have a shield and you need to get past it to hit me or break the shield within lets say... 10 hits. That should help with more powerful and unpredictable hits." I say after sitting down opposite her and thinking over what training methods I could use. "We can get onto reaction times sometime later."

"So how did you meet Terra in the real world then." Aurora asks curiously as we ate our lunch. I look up from my food at her confused at her question but I decide to answer it truthfully.

"We go to the same secondary school and we are in the same form and most of the same classes so we used to see a lot of each other around school and I guess being part of the outcasts we became friends." I reply honestly with a pang of nostalgia when thinking of the old times at school, this had all stopped now that we were trapped in Aincrad.

"So you know him pretty well then." She comments slowly most likely thinking how she came into this game without anyone whom she knew from the real world.

"Yer, I probably know him better than anyone in Aincrad. Why do you want to know though?" I ask still curious of the notion of these questions about Andrew.

"Well I just saw how well you two knew each other and just wondered." She says quickly and not making eye contact.

"And why do you still use his IGN, I mean come on you live in the same house. I would have thought by now you could trust each other enough for that." I comment thinking that from the two weeks of them being in the same house they would know each other's names.

"Well, I guess its just easy to use IGNs and we've never really talked about things like that often." She replies calmly before getting to her feet and saying loudly. "Okay, enough talking now. Lets get back to training."

"Bit eager aren't you." I say quietly before taking one last swig from my water bottle and getting to my feet and equipping one of my low level shields for the training. I raise my red painted iron shield defensively and the training session begins.

By the end of the training we were both exhausted my shield had nearly been destroyed and Aurora's Rapier felt like a lump of raw metal in her hand. However exhausted we were though the training had gone extremely well and Aurora was now getting much better at hitting past defences and her sword skills had increased in power by a great deal.

"Well that was a pretty good first session and you're getting a lot better." I say with pride in my student and my training methods.

"That and I was able to jab you to death." She commented with a grin thinking of the amount of times she had got past my shield and hit me. "But seriously thank you, it's helped a lot and is more enjoyable than most of Terra's methods." She continued sincerely.

"No problem and whenever you want some more help just ask and I'll help." I say happy that my method of training had gone down well with Aurora. "Well I guess we better get back home before it gets dark." I continue while looking into the sky to see that the sun was beginning to fall in the sky. So we began to walk back to the floor portal from the plains training ground.

"So... Does Terra have any one special to him in the real world?" Aurora asks me tentatively. I stop walking raise my eyebrows and turn to look at her. I tried to look into her eyes but she was blatantly trying to avoid eye contact by looking into the clear sky.

"As far as I know, no he doesn't." I say slowly and I begin to walk again to try and avoid any more awkward questions. I look back briefly to see a slight expression of relief cross her face. She continues to walk beside me with a grin but this time without talking, obviously lost in her thoughts. For the rest of the walk I try to figure out all of the possible motives for the question she asked and her reaction to it, but ending up with only one possibility. "Oh god no." I think with a roll of my eyes.


	11. Chapter 11

Me and the Golden-Oak Rangers, stood around a grey stone, engraved table, with the rest of the front line players and their guilds. The largest of the guilds were the Knights of the Blood Oath in their heavy white and red armour and the Divine Dragon Alliance in their Blue and grey iron armour. We were here to discuss the upcoming strategy for defeating the 32nd floor's boss, a fully grown Fire Drake. At the head of the table with hands pressed flat upon the table was the second in command of the Knights of the Blood Oath. She had long chestnut brown hair and fiery hazel eyes, she had the nickname of the lightning flash Asuna for the absolute mad speed at which she wielded her white steel rapier which rested, sheathed in her belt. She had become known by the front liners as one of the most determined players to clear the floors and return to the real world, not for glory or fame but because she believed this world to be nothing more than a fake world of danger and sorrow.

"Come on people, think! We need to have an agreed plan before we go into that room! Does anyone know anything about this boss?" She demands of the assembled players with an authoritative and determined voice.

"All we know is that it's a large fully grown Fire Drake." I say calmly to the players, un-fazed by her demanding shouts.

"Really, is that all we know. Do we know any of it's attacks or weapons that it might use against us?" She asks, looking me right in the eyes with determination.

"Well we can guess that it is like most of the Drakes on the floor. Claws, breath attack and tail. Claws are used as a base attack against enemies but can do a good deal of damage. A breath attack can vary but considering it is a Fire Drake we can assume that it will have fire powers, it will probably use them if it sees a large group together in one place to do splash damage or begin to randomly attack with it when it feels in danger or when enraged. It's tail attack could hit people trying to flank the beast or for a large AOE sweep of it's attackers." I tell the assembled players with a loud voice returning Asuna's stare with equal determination to win.

"Okay, that's better than what we had 5 minutes ago, thank you Woods. Now lets get down to planning the attack." She says happily moving back from the table and folding her arms, inviting people to voice their suggestions. This is when Heathcliff steps forward, he was the leader and founder of the Knights of the Blood Oath. He was a tall and muscular man with light brown hair, he wore a blood red set of armour and had a long one handed steel sword sheathed and a large white shield embossed with a red cross of the Knights Templar.

"I would suggest having approximately three decoy teams and three attack teams. Have the decoy teams distract and aggravate the beast into attacking them and then the attack teams switch in from the flanks and do damage before backing out and waiting for the decoy teams to re distract the Drake." He lays out his simple plan with a deep authoritative yet calm voice.

"Well that wasn't too hard was it" I hear Oliver say quietly behind me. He along with the rest of the Rangers didn't like the Knights of the Blood Oath and their authoritative ways. "And who would you have being the distraction, as obviously you and your guild _must_ have the last hit don't they?" He continued in a raised irritated voice so that every one could hear him.

Heathcliff sent a cold glare over to Oliver who he disliked as much as Oliver hated him. But with a level headed voice and calm composure he answered. "Okay then, my Knights and the Dragons should be big enough for a sufficient decoy team and your Rangers and the other guilds can act as strike force, happy now." He started by looking at the sea of red and red, white and grey armour to the mob of different colours from the solo players and non-uniformed guilds and finishing upon the small band of gold and brown armour of the Rangers.

"We all finished up then, any questions?" Asuna steps in signalling the end of the strategy meeting.

"When are we going to do it?" I ask without hesitation after realising that was the one thing we hadn't truly discussed.

"We'll do it at noon tomorrow." Asuna answered after a pause to think. "Any more questions." She continued but after she saw no more questions she ended the meeting with a curt "Meeting adjourned." At that the room began to empty of the smaller guilds and solo players and then quickly followed out by the bigger and main clearing guilds with the last to leave being the Knights of the Blood Oath. I followed the Rangers as they walked out of the conference room and towards the floor portal.

"I bet you that they intended to be the strike teams, the Knights and Dragons, and making the rest of us do decoy, just so that they could get the last hit for the boss item." Oliver commented angrily when out of earshot of the other front liners. I looked at him and saw fire in his eyes. He was against most power playing and playing other people down just for their own gain, exactly what the Knights and Dragons usually did during boss battles.

"Trust me, they still intend to get that last hit as it's going to be a pretty rare or at least powerful item from this boss, considering it's practically a dragon." Andrew B added bitterly knowing that even if they weren't the attack teams that they would still attempt for the last hit.

"Bloody Hell people. Calm down, it's just an item really and one that will be pretty average in the later floors. We all get the same money and exp from the boss so its not as if it's going to get us killed not hitting the last hit on the Drake." I say evenly trying to calm the two down before they go and hit a member one of the two power guilds, however I know it wont work and they just look at me as if I'm speaking nonsense. "Okay then, don't take my advice. Just don't get into too big of a fight with them later." I say with a shake of my head and then turning to the other two who had been silent this whole time. "Soooo, what do you think about the plan?"

"It's okay I suppose, but there isn't much organisation for the strike teams at the moment. So it could go either way." Andrew says slowly as he realises how even if the Knights and the Dragons aren't fighting the main battle, the strike teams will have a definite problem with organisation during the battle itself. "Why don't we just hold a meeting with the rest of the soloers, wouldn't that just make things easier."

"Bit late for that Terra. Everyone is going home to go to bed and we meet up at the boss room at 12 tomorrow, not much time to sort things out. Just gonna have to wing it and hope for the best." Aurora commented with humour and determination in her voice. We all look at her knowing that it wasn't exactly easy to go into a full scale boss raid without much of a plan with the ones you are working with. "So optimistic you lot are." She remarked under her breath.

We all stood in front of a large thick stone door intricately engraved with dragons breathing great balls of fire among a group of armoured soldiers holding shields in the middle of the door. I looked at this carving wondering whether this same fate would come upon us once we had crossed into the boss room. "Bit grim, isn't it." I say to no one in particular.

"Fear is the first step to defeat." Says a voice behind me. I turn my head to see a boy around my age with black hair and dark grey eyes, he wore a flowing black cloak and wore sturdy black boots and a long black blade was visible on his back. Kirito, one of the highest level players in the game and one of the most respected solo player by the front line players who had put aside his reputation as a beta cheater. "I've seen doors like this before, it means a single powerful enemy lies before these doors." He explains.

"Well at least that means he has no minions."I say in relief now that the enemy count had dropped to one. "Are we all ready then, as I want to get on with this." I continue while looking over the small temporary camp that held the participating players, where the solo players were talking merrily with each other and with the smaller guilds and where the bigger guild sat together keeping themselves to themselves.

"As ready as it's going to get I think." He says with a sigh and a shake of his head. "OKAY, EVERYONE! listen up! You have 3 minutes to prepare or we go in without your help." He shouts in a authoritative voice which everyone turned their heads towards and gave a shake of the head or got up and moved towards the door.

"Well that was simple." I say with surprise at how quick the reaction was and how willingly people joined Kirito's side in battle. I look to the Rangers and see that they had already got up and were now waiting in front of the door with me. Soon came the rest of the soloers and smaller guilds and lastly the larger clearing guilds. When I see everyone ready I give a nod towards Kirito who moves forward with his sword unsheathed and pushed open the door.


	12. Chapter 12

As the door opened we saw the room which awaited us. It was a large circular cave hall with dark stone walls and ceiling which had large spike of granite hanging down precariously. The floor was made of pure white tiles which made a spiralling pattern into the centre of the room where the boss lay in wait for us. The boss was a huge dragon with smooth, yet strong as steel blood red scales. Its claws were as long as a human arm and sharper than any blade made by human hand. Its tail was long, thick and had a large spear-head like tip to it. The name which floated above its sleeping body, next to 4 green health bars, read "Darmith Firebreath". As we walked into the room, with Kirito leading, the resting dragon raised its resting head, opened its glowing red eyes and let out a tremendous roar which shook the whole floor and charged at the amasses players with surprising speed.

"DECOY GROUPS, NOW!" Ordered Kirito keeping to the agreed plan, a few seconds later approximately 50 players ran past him in full uniformed armour with weapons drawn straight at the boss. "STRIKE TEAMS, IN POSITION!" He continued now directing his words at the remaining players before readying his black blade and advancing into a flanking position to wait for the right moment to strike. I look to the Rangers beside me and give a swift nod as we all draw our weapons and move to the opposite flank of Kirito. In the centre of the room the decoy teams were engaging the dragon in quick strikes to enrage it, but without getting close enough to be in its reach. Suddenly the dragon reared up with a great roar and came back down with a huge tremor knocking down all surrounding it.

"NOW!" I shout to the Rangers and any of the other strike teams that could hear me. We charged down at the dragon, quickly passing the players now on the ground and striking heavy blows, gauging large glowing red cuts upon the dragon's soft, pale underbelly. To my side I saw Kirito and two other soloers doing similar to me until suddenly the dragon lashed out with its razor claws hitting me and two others squarely in the chest and sending us flying across the room and into the wall. The impact winded me and sent a great dull pain throughout my body with the sharp pain of the claw attack still present on my chest. But with laboured breath and the help of the black sword I stood back up and slowly began to move back towards the fight.

The strike teams had now moved back and the decoy teams had re-engaged the dragon on all sides. However the dragon had begun to learn and therefore sent a great red and orange ball of hell fire towards a group of players who were waiting on the flanks to strike before quickly following up with a full 360 tail spin attack which sent all those without shields into the walls of the room. The ones still standing, including me, now realised that our plan wasn't going to work for much longer and with a quick and nervous look between each other we charged at the boss unleashing a full unrelenting assault upon the boss giving time for our fallen comrades to recover.

Our attacks landed upon the steely scales of the dragon dealing no more than a small scratch to its impenetrable armour, however whenever its belly was exposed a rain of attacks came down upon it before it had any chance to react at all. By now all of the were now back up and returning to the fight to gain vengeance against the boss. Nearly all coordination had been lost between the players and everyone was now attacking the Boss from all sides with all the fury filled might which they had. However Darmith matched this change in pace by sending out long burst of flame while spinning around and lashing its sharp tail at any that dared get to close. The battle had become extremely hard and we had lost at least 3 players now and the dragon was only just dropping into a yellow half HP.

As soon as we were able to finally drag it into its third bar of health it reared upwards and raised its head in the now blisteringly hot air. It let out a tremendous roar which sent a visible shock wave around the room and shaking the walls and ground. The dragon then crashed back down to the ground causing another tremor through the ground. In the silence that ensued, the cracking of stone above us could be heard. In unison all the players raised their heads to look at the ceiling above us. The hanging spikes of solid rock had large cracks along the section connected to the ceiling and then all of a sudden they all began to fall upon us.

The huge spikes began to smash to the ground, smashing on impact sending large pieces of stone shrapnel in every direction with no discretion to what was in its path and completely destroying the white tiled floor. By now most of the players had begun to run to the outer rim of the room but the more agile and fast rapier users of the front liners were dodging around the deadly shrapnel as if this was a usual thing for them. These determined and no less skilled players included Andrew who was jumping from the tops of the falling rocks getting higher and higher each time, next to him was Aurora who was also trying to get as high as possible and only by her bright chestnut hair could Asuna be seen running at great speed on the ground weaving and dodging around the rock with a practised ease.

As they approached the dragon, who had seemed to have avoided being hit by the falling terrors, spotted its remaining three opponents and began to attack them with everything it possessed, yet it was in vain as the three deftly avoided the attacks and begun their attacks. Andrew and Aurora jumped off of a stone spike simultaneously and stabbed out with their glowing swords at the dragon's red eyes. At the same time Asuna gauged out a large cut along its now exposed and weakened neck after launching herself off from the ground in a massive bound and spinning mid air to build up her sword skill and as much momentum as possible for the attack.

The three combined attacks hit at the same time and an eruption of power blasted from their swords into the dragons most weak spots sending it flying across the room through the scattered but now resting shrapnel. This one combined attack dealt more damage than any of us had been able to do this whole battle, this extraordinary attack brought the dragon down to half a bar of health.

"NOW! EVERYONE ATTACK NOW!" I hear Heathcliff's loud voice and commanding voice coming from the mass of players before he and his knights charged from the crowd towards the stunned dragon. After a moments hesitation the rest of the players joined the final charge to end this boss battle as quickly as possible. It didn't take too long to reach the other side of the room by running full pelt through the shrapnel that was now strewn across the whole room where all the players joined the three rapier users and launched a final joint attack to finish off the dragon. However our newel formed line was broken when Heathcliff and two of his notably powerful knights rushed ahead of the rest of the players and delivered 3 piercing stabs to the dragon's heart with the sharpest of blades, finishing the dragon and ending the fight.

The usual "CONGRATULATIONS!" was in the air and the routine appearance of the drop panels phased no one and failed to turn the attention from the three that had just ended this battle. I see Oliver walk to my side and past me until he was facing the three breakaway knights and said with fury in his voice "See, I knew damn well that you would go for that last hit for your guild."

"Because you wouldn't have done the same." Heathcliff returns calmly as he opens his inventory to see what the last hit drop actually was. He presses a button and his white armour was replaced by a heavy plate armour coloured in blood red matching his Guild's name. He looks down at his armour without surprise as if this was exactly what he was expecting to find. "Now, if you'll excuse me there's a new floor to clear." He says before bowing graciously and walking off towards the floor door with his guild members in tow.

"We all knew he was going to do it Oliver. But there's nothing we can do about it is there? Unless you suggest fighting the Knights?" Andrew B remarks with annoyance in his voice as he came up to Oliver's side.

"Well I'm not letting them sweep that floor on their own. Lets go, a new and harder floor awaits." He says with a determination and gruffness in his voice before he walked towards the now open floor door not waiting for the rest to follow.

"Well, he leaves us so much choice doesn't he." Andrew B says sarcastically before following after Oliver.

"Guess we better get moving too." I say to Andrew and Aurora I say before walking over to the door and through the moving whiteness of the portal.


	13. Chapter 13

It was December 24th 2023 As I stood in front of the blazing fire my spacious, stone walled forge. I moved the tongs in my hands, which held a large bar of obsidian iron alloy, a new material I had started testing with, which was now glowing white hot in the boiling heat of the coal and wood fire beneath it. As the alloy began to slowly droop down, now flexible I drew it out from the flames and placed it on my black iron anvil, picked up my steel hammer and began to beat the malleable alloy into shape. The ring of metal against metal sang out through my forge and I began to hum out a tune in step with the hammer falls. The blade quickly came to form as it slowly cooled in the hot air that filled the room. When I inspected the blades form I knew my work on the shape was now complete and so I reached to my workbench and picked up my engraving tools and began to chisel words into the end of the blade before it cooled completely.

I then, with my tongs, picked the now finished blade and dipped it into a tall bucket of water which stood full beside me. Great billows of white steam rose gracefully from the bucket of water as the still slightly glowing blade changed to a deep black colour. I took the blade from the bucket and replaced it onto the anvil and walked over to my work bench where the hilt for the sword, which I had created earlier in the day, lay quietly. I returned to the anvil with the hilt and slotted it onto the black blade. I quickly leaned over to my closed furnace and took out a small stone container of melted gold which I swiftly poured into the crack where the blade and hilt weren't truly connected yet, let it cool down for a few seconds and then placed the completed sword into the bucket of water once more to solidify the gold to the sword and hilt.

I retracted it from the water and placed it upon my workbench for inspection. The pommel of sword was encrusted with a flawless meadow green emerald. The grip was made from 3 layers of hide leather topped with a red silken band. The cross guard of the sword was made of burnished silver resembled the wings of a dragon along with the head of the dragon with a clear sapphire eye along the bottom part of the blade with glittering gold between it and the actually blade. The blade itself was a simple, long and straight obsidian blade. But it was sharp enough to slice through wood without any problem, the tip strong enough to pierce through flesh and bone without a qualm. The blade also held a small engraving which was hard to see on the black blade which read "Amicis sunt protector eorum".

"And you shall be called Shadow Beam." I say, content with my new and more powerful blade which had gone surprisingly well.

"What is it with you and the colour black." I hear a humoured voice from the door of the forge. Shocked I spin around with my blade at the ready until I see Andrew leaning against the wall next to the closed dark wood door, smiling smugly.

"How the hell did you get in? I thought I locked the door." I say in complete surprise at the unannounced appearance of my friend and that he was able to get through the locked door to my forge without me even noticing.

"Doesn't matter how I got in." He says cockily knowing that I'm going to be madly confused at how he got in. "But anyway, lets see the new sword then." He continues as he gets off the wall and walks towards me. When he reaches me I carefully hand over my sword for him to look at it. As soon as my hands leave the blade the weight of it weighs down on Andrew and his arms drop slightly due to the unexpected weight of the large sword. He goes to hold it by the hilt and inspects the sword by lowering it into a general ready position to test it's balance and sharpness. He then looks closely at the hilt in astonishment at the workmanship of the metal.

He gives me back my sword, looks back up at me and says sarcastically and with a laugh. "Are you sure you're not a Dwarf Steven, as that is the best forged sword Iv'e seen in this game and in the real world. And what does the inscription actually say?"

"Roughly it says, "One's friends are their shield." it's Latin. So what did you actually want from me, as I assume you didn't come here just to see a sword?" I reply and ask curiously now wondering about the real reason behind his unexpected visit.

"Way to change the subject. But okay, Aurora wants to have a big Christmas all together, that being me, you, Andrew, and Oliver. As last year she was completely alone and we both think it will be a good thing to have considering we are now a guild. That and have you heard about the event boss tonight?" He says revealing his meaning for visiting and ending with a questioning tone.

"Yer, Nicholas the Renegade is the boss, he's supposedly got a pretty rare drop. But I'm not gonna bother with it considering the I know the Dragons are all ready preparing for the battle and I know Kirito seems determined on getting that item, whatever it may be. But for the Christmas thing tomorrow is it going to be at your's." I say as I start to clean my workspace of all the random shards of excess metal.

"Yer, at my house tomorrow at 6pm. And for a change try not to look a complete mess or have smoke and metal clinging to you." He says with a smile before quickly looking round the room and then walking back towards the door. "So, I'll see you there then." He ends as I nod my head in acknowledgement before opening the thick wooden door to the sunny outside world and walking out.

I shake my head slightly as the door slams shut behind him. I look down at the sword in my hand and gently place it upon my wooden weapons rack by its dragon wing cross guard. I then hang up my leather blacksmiths apron, took off my cured leather gloves and placed them onto my anvil, pulled up a small stall and sat in front of the blazing fire and stared into the ever shifting and glowing flames which flared from the glowing white coals which fuelled the forgery's flames day and night giving a constant calming and trusting heat to the building.


	14. Chapter 14

I walked through the darkening white snow covered streets of the 18th floor. The sky was covered in layers of thick white clouds which were dropping a heavy load of snow which fell to the ground in the fashion of a snowstorm whipped up by the cold northern wind. As I walked through the town centre I saw that a huge fir tree, ornately decorated with everything possible and a large glowing and spinning golden star stood in the centre and lit up the town square with the thousands of multicoloured fairy lights which winded around the deep green pines of the tree. Around the town centre groups of celebrating people could be seen talking and laughing merrily while others were throwing snowballs around at each other playfully.

The first Christmas in Aincrad had been the complete opposite to what I was seeing now. People were in dark and sad moods of being away from their families and friends and in a completely different world compared to what they would usually expect at this time of year. There was no joy, no laughing, no singing and the snow just formed a reason for people to stay in their warm houses for the whole day. But now people had begun to get used to life, excepted it, found new friends, formed new families and most of all still had the will to get into the seasonal cheer and celebrate.

The houses I passed were adorned with decorations and all the lights were on and glowing through the drawn curtains of the white cottages. As I came up to Andrews house I looked into the horizon and saw the golden and orange glow of the sun behind the thick clouds low in the sky as it began to fall below the horizon. I walked up towards the thick wooden door as the icy snow crunched down beneath my feet leaving deep footprints behind me as I walked and knocked on the door loudly creating a loud booming noise which echoed through the stillness of the darkening night.

The door opened inwards to reveal Aurora standing there with her hair loose down her back and wearing simple white dress which fell down to below her knees and with the biggest smile I had ever seen on her. She looked at me and my clothing for the night, a black jacket now wet from snow, a short sleeved red t-shirt, black trousers and brown leather boots which were covered in snow. She looked back up at me and said "Always dressed for the occasion, aren't you Steven." She says sarcastically with a laugh. "Hang your jacket up and take your boots off before you make the whole place wet and cold with the snow out there." She says as I walk through the door and into the porch. She then promptly shuts the door, blocking the cold wind and snow which had been blowing in through the open door into the warm house. Once the door is closed I can hear the loud laughs and voices of three other people coming from the dining room down the hallway.

I quickly hang up my coat and take my boots off and begin to walk down the hallway as Aurora hurries off to the kitchen, obviously halfway through preparing food for the night. As I walk into the dining room I see the usual mahogany table surrounded by its oaken chairs, but tonight three of the chairs were currently occupied by both Andrews and Oliver who were all wearing casual clothes for the occasion. Andrew sees me walking into the room and with a smile says "Took your time getting here didn't you."

"Well I do live a couple floors away and anyway I wanted to finish some stuff up at my forge before coming down." I say indifferently, not really bothered about being the last to arrive. I sit down in one of the oak chairs and ask curiously. "So what have you three been talking about in my absence?"

"Oh just about random stuff we remember from the real world, nothing to important. But did you hear what happened last night with the event boss? As we haven't been able to find much out on it." Oliver asks me in interest.

"All I know about it is that the Holy Dragon Alliance and the Fuurinkazan guilds fought it out and that Kirito was able to solo the boss, apart from that I know nothing more. You'll have to ask Klein or Kirito about it as I doubt the papers will find out what actually happened." I say slowly as I lean back in my chair and begin to relax. As Oliver begins to open his mouth to continue talking the door from the kitchen abruptly burst open and Aurora rushed through it holding a massive silver platter which held a huge golden brown cooked turkey surrounded by crisped potatoes swimming in a dark brown gravy. When she reached the table Me and Oliver moved our chairs aside so that she could place the silver platter down gently in the middle of the table.

"WOAH! THAT LOOKS AMAZING!" Andrew B shouts after he had got over the initial shock of the exquisite food which now sat in front of us. From Andrew B's reaction I assumed that, like myself, he had never seen food such as this in the virtual world before and was once again completely immersed into the world we were now stuck inside of. He then looked up at Aurora and asked. "How long did that take?!"

"To catch it, about 10 minutes and to cook it properly, most of today." She says modestly knowing that her skill with foods far surpassed our skill combined. She then pulled out a chair next to Andrew and sat down next to him. She then brought out 5 plates with full sets of cutlery from her inventory and passed them round to us all. Andrew then looked at Aurora, who quickly nodded, and started carving the turkey and began passing bits round to everyone. After a minute or so our plates were full and the turkey was nearly down to the bone. Andrew placed down his carving knife and holding fork and looked at us, astonished that we hadn't already started stuffing our faces and said. "Well dig in then".

As we began to eat the Christmas dinner the sound of carol singing could be heard softly resonating from the town square around the town as the sun completely set below the cold horizon and the bright white moon rose from behind the clouds creating a soft white glow throughout the whole floor. The food itself, which had to be the best thing I had ever tasted in a virtual world, didn't take to long to finish but the conversations and jokes that passed across the table lasted for hours yet only seemed like minutes. In this time life was almost back to normal with no worries or sadness about the future within this virtual world so far away from our families and practically everyone we knew from the real world.

After the carols had faded away and the night had truly set in Oliver, who had obviously got into the Christmas spirit, brought out gifts for everyone. A rare full, quick heal crystal for Aurora, A shield spray for Andrew B, A pair of buffed, comfortable and practical gloves for Andrew and for me he heaved out a huge lump of pure white metal from his inventory and passed it over to me.

"Wow a lump of metal thanks." I say with a laugh. "But seriously what metal is it." I ask curiously not recognising what element it was.

"Palladium, took ages to get, but my forging skill is nowhere high enough to make anything with it so I thought you might be able to do something with it." He answers my question before receiving thanks from everyone for the gifts. He then goes on to say. "Well, has anyone else bothered with gifts, or am I not getting one." He says accusingly but not with much seriousness. He looks to both me and Andrew B but we shake our heads slowly, caught out by this. He then looks to Andrew.

Andrew awkwardly shuffles in his seat before taking a large velvet box from his inventory and saying while looking right into Aurora's eyes. "Here, I got this for you in thanks for being here to make this home less lonely and for helping me out on the field." He says with a slight blush as he gives the box to Aurora who looked completely taken by surprise at this. She opens the box to reveal a pure silver chain necklace with a small rain drop shaped ice crystal attached at the bottom. Upon seeing it she gives out a gasp of shock at its beauty before she places it around her neck and fastened it in place.

"Looks perfect on you." Andrew says with a shy smile. I roll my eyes knowing exactly where this is coming from but get surprised when Aurora looks down at the necklace, back up to Andrew and then leaning closer to hold him and kiss him for a very long time. Once she pulls away Andrew is completely flustered and has lost all of his composure which he had yet been able to keep. He looks across to us three and sees that we are all smiling and suppressing laughs. But Aurora just takes Andrew's hand tightly with a smile across her face.

I look out the window and see that it's pitch black darkness, I then open up my menu to see that its nearly One O'clock in the morning. I look up at the others and say. "Well, I better get moving so that I can get home for the night." I say before getting up from the table saying my farewells and walking to the door. I get my jacket and boots and open the door revealing the dark and cold blizzard that had whipped up during the last few hours and began to walk back to the floor portalon the other side of the now silent and sleeping town.


	15. Chapter 15

I swung my black long sword with a full double handed sweep cutting in half the rotting, half missing, brainless zombie making it explode into a hundred of dark green particles giving off a slight glow in the dark forest shadowed by the rising labyrinth tower of of the 49th floor. That was the last of the zombie group that had been wandering through the area near to me. Cautiously, with a tight grip on my silken sword grip, I did a full visual sweep of the dark and foreboding forest looking out for any more monsters that may ambush me again. Once I thought it to be clear I kept towards the tower which stood quietly not to far in front of me, my mission being the same as the rest of the front liners, attempt to find the labyrinth entrance and map out as much of it as possible to continue the push for floor 100.

As I powered through the forest I could hear the groans and hideous noises that were coming from the surrounding forest, but I ignored them and kept concentrating on getting over to the tower as fast as I could without running right into a horde of flesh hungry zombies. As I got closer to the tower it gradually got darker and darker, until it was getting close to being pitch black. However this didn't really bother me as I had never really been afraid of the dark and my eye sight was generally good in the darkness. What started to worry me however, was the weird and changing noises that were coming from the section of forest in front of me, only slightly human sounding and definitely something big.

I slow my pace as the noise gets close and seemingly in my approximate area. I suddenly saw a huge shadow looming in front of me reaching up to the tree tops and as wide as a 3 tree trunks. I stop so abruptly that I fall over flat on my face causing several twigs to snap loudly and a large number of dry leaves to crumple and rustle under my weight in the silent and dark forest. I slowly look up and fully see the monster that stood in front of me. It was a huge humanoid shaped monster with its skin green and falling off in a lot of places with hole sections of dark red festering flesh missing, its body was muscular and tensed seemingly close to ripping the skin, its hands were lined with sharp spikes of bone which ran along the fingers and top of the hand. As it heard the noise that I had made it turned its head towards me to reveal a half burnt face revealing blackened bones with the other half almost human, dark blue eyes, pinkish skin, slightly puffy lips and dark brown, messy and singed hair.

I froze in shock and fright at this sight and tried to blend into the ground, hoping that it wouldn't see me and move on. But it obviously had enhanced vision as it soon spotted me on the ground and brought its huge arms plummeting down at me. I quickly rolled out of the way and scrambled to my feet before being launched at least 20 meters into a tree by a powerful punch from the monster. I slid down the tree and crash to the ground with a thud. As I begin to hear my heavy breathing and my vision clears up from the blurriness the impact created I see that the monster is slowly moving its way over to me to finish off its kill. I try to push myself onto my feet but my arms have lost all their energy and my body flares up in sharp pain from the slightest of movements.

Suddenly a huge explosion erupts on the side of the monster's head creating a huge white flame and a loud echoing sound. As the flash went off I had to shield my eyes from the blinding light. The monster gives out a large shriek of pain as the blast obliterated its whole left shoulder and completely ripped apart the more human part of its face with shrapnel making dark green blood gush out of its wounds. As my eyes readjust to the light once more I see the monster staggering to its side before a figure in dark blue armour jumping on its back and ramming a blue metal blade into its spinal chord. When the blade destroys the monster's spine the warrior jumps off the monster and lets it fall on its side, dead, before they retrieve their sword and rush over to me.

"Can you walk?" I hear the hooded warrior say with a worried girl's voice. I nod quickly before, with great effort, pushing myself painfully to my feet, but I have to lean on my sword to get my breath back and to let the pain pass. "Good enough." I hear the voice again before I feel a strong hand on my arm supporting me and then dragged forward as she began to move ahead at speed. I'm only able to keep up with her because of her supporting hand and with sheer the stubbornness I possessed. A few seconds after we began to move I could hear a lot of noises coming from behind, obviously the explosion had attracted a huge amount of attention from nearby monsters who could be heard swarming round the area we had just run from.

After a few minutes of hard running we came out into a clearing in the forest which was out of the way of the tower and so was in the direct view of the burning sun which hung high in the sky. As soon as the supporting hand left my arm I fell face forward onto the floor in exhaustion breathed heavily trying to hold back the dull pain which was rising within my chest and legs. When I had recovered a little I raised my head and looked up at the figure that stood above me leaning on her sword with eyebrows raised in an accusatory way.

"What?! I'm tired." I say defensively. She had cold blue eyes and long bright blonde hair which fell down her back in a plait which was tied back with a simple white cloth strip. She was tall and quite bulky and strong with an authoritative air about her. Her armour was painted dark blue and seemed to be made from refined and tempered iron, under her armour was a long midnight blue and golden battle robe which was covered in dry mud and torn in some places. She stood there with a European looking longsword which had an enscripted golden inner section surrounded by a sharp and shining white blade. I recognised her as one of the new and determined players to have made her way up the ranks into the main fronliners.

"And I'm the one who just dragged your arse over here after saving you from the mutant, the name's Sky nice to meet you." She says in disbelief at the fact I was still on the floor relaxing.

"Yeah well... why did you do it anyway?" I ask curiously not truly knowing why she saved me as up until now we hadn't really come into contact with each other, I didn't even know her name.

"Well for one we can't have one of the good natured and skilled warriors dying before we even hit halfway and honestly I want you to help me with training." She says calmly as she reaches down with her hand to help pull me to my feet. Slowly I accept the helping hand and get back to my feet, when on my feet she is only slightly taller than me and around my age.

"Why do you want me to help though? I mean there's a good number of frontliners that would do the job well enough." I ask still curious at why she had chosen me out of the many front line players who would gladly take on a player for training.

"Jesus Christ, I knew you were stubborn but come on now. You have a fighting style similar to me, your generally a good person and Aurora recommended you." She says with exasperation.

"If Aurora's involved. Do I really have any choice." I say in defeat and surprise that Aurora had gone and recommended me as a trainer. I look at her smug face and shake my head while I picked up my midnight black sword from the green grass and sheathed it. Suddenly, out of the blue, I hear the high pitched beep of an incoming voice message. I quickly swipe open my menu and pick the call up to see Andrew on the other side.

"Steven, could you get over here as soon as you can, there's something going on tonight and tomorrow that I want to talk about" He says hurriedly.

"Bit vague, but okay I can get down there in around 20 minutes." I say slowly with my brows furrowed worried that something bad was happening with Andrew. He promptly nods his head and hangs up the call. I close my menu and look back up to Sky and ask. "You free for the rest of today?"

"Yer I guess I am now." She says quickly deciding on the spot to join me in what ever was going on.

"Well we better get moving to the portal then." I say before turning and running back towards the forest which lay between us and the floor portal.


	16. Chapter 16

Approximately 25 minutes later me and Sky stood outside Andrew's house out of breath from running it all the way from the floor portal on the other side of town. I knock on the door heavily once again creating a resonating sound. The door is promptly opened by Aurora who was wearing a yellow T-shirt and a short brown skirt, I also noticed that the necklace Andrew had given her was still hanging from her neck.

"Hi Steven, hi Sky." She says calmly. As she mentions Sky's name I throw a somewhat accusatory glare at her which is returned by a innocent smile. As the three of us walked into the house I heard voices coming from the dining room, obviously in the middle of some sort of meeting. as we walk through the door I see that Andrew, Oliver and Andrew B were sitting at the mahogany table with heads down talking over a map.

"Am I always the last one to turn up or something?" I ask in place of a normal greeting as I realise that I seem to always arrive last to things such as this.

"Well your always up at the front lines or not paying attention to your messages or the time if your in your forge." Andrew says as he looks over his shoulder at me. "but for a change we've only just started so sit down quickly." He says as he waves his hands to the three empty chairs sat around the table. As I go and sit down to the Left of Andrew I see that the map on the table is one of the 30th floor, yet another floor covered by dark and foreboding forests.

"What's going on then and how does it involve the 30th floor?" I ask, getting straight to the point of this meet up. Andrew looks over to Sky as if waiting for her to say something.

"Well I found out that there's going to be an event running through tonight to around mid day tomorrow, new years day. From what I know its going to be an invasion type event where we have to stop the monsters from getting into town and killing the NPCs." She reveals to everyone as she points to the town which we, according to her, needed to defend from monsters yet to be known.

"And where would this information be coming from and can we even trust you? I mean Iv'e only just met you today." Oliver says with an accusatory and unbelieving tone to his voice.

"I got the information from an event specific NPC which by now has disappeared off until the event happens again and the reason we've only just met is because before hand I've been too busy training or helping Aurora with things to come meet up with all of you and as I'm a soloer, like Steven is, I haven't needed to do anything guild related with you two." She says with annoyance and an irritated glare directed at Oliver who sat there unfazed by Sky's fiery reaction.

"Oliver does it really matter where the information came from? And if this is going on then I can bet you anything that the Dragons and Blood nights will be there grinding and item profiting off of it massively. If we can stop them from taking everything from this event its worth the risk and worth the information no matter how it was obtained." I say irritated at how Oliver instantly doubted Sky's intentions even though I myself had only recently met her.

Oliver sent an annoyed but resigned glare at me before saying "Okay then, as long as we get in the way of the Dragons and Blood Knights I'm in on this. Those stuck up brats don't need any more spoiling or experience compared to the lower guilds which they seem not to care about." He then leaned back in his chair avoiding Sky's annoyed eyes.

"Andrew, you in on this?" I say quickly to Andrew B, knowing that with Oliver in on it that he would surely join the fight making it a full guild raid.

He quickly looks at Oliver, at the map, at Sky and then back to me before slowly saying. "I'm in." As he too leans back in his seat staring out the window into the afternoon's sky which had already begun to move into a shade of orange. "But if we're going to plan this we've got to be quick about it, as its nearly sunset."

"Well then lets get on with planning this thing then." Aurora says swiftly spreading out a variety of maps and gathered information across the table for us all to see and to plan our tactics from.

The planning period lasted for a straight hour of going through a number of different approaches at this one time event, but in the end after a few arguments and adjustments decided on one plan. We were going to station our selves in pairs around the forest entrance in a line so that when the monsters exited from their spawn they would meet our wall defence stopping them from getting to the large town filled with lower level players and innocent NPCs. The plan was simple yet we hoped it would be effective and made stronger by the pair choices. Andrew and Aurora, two fast rapier users who sped through their enemies with the grace of two soaring swans at twilight. Andrew B and Oliver, a formidable pair when they combine Andrew B's shield defence with Oliver's brutally strong heavy weapon attacks which could sweep through a large group of enemies with merciless ease. The last pair was me and Sky, we were both heavy blade users with strong sweeps and fast sword movements, we were both trained in hand to hand combat and had the strength and agility to fight unarmed for long enough to retrieve a weapon. We were the two unknowns in the group, two solo players who could change the course of the battle with such a swiftness unseen in most Solo players.

"This should be interesting" I thought to myself as we walked through the large town filled with stone buildings and a number of players who seemed oblivious to what was about to occur. As we walked outside the town walls we saw two large groups of people moving towards a different section of a forest to us, they wore either white and red or grey iron armour and were lead by their respective guild leaders. I looked to my side at Oliver and said. "I did say they would be here."

By the time we reached the forest outskirts we could see the sun beginning to set below the horizon of the dark green fields which lay behind and to the side of us. The forest was still lit and we could clearly see into it but we all had the feeling of something watching us from the silent and unmoving forest which we were determinedly advancing towards without stop. As we walked for a few minutes into the forest we stopped and spread out over a 100 meter distance giving each pair enough room to work without interfering with another pair. The monster's spawn point was thought to be approximately 300 meters in front of us from a large cave entrance in the side of the rising hill which the forest had conquered a long time ago.

Me and Sky took up positions beside each other and drew our swords, my black sword seemed to resonate darkness around it whereas Sky's white and gold blade glimmered in the ever dying light. We were both in full battle armour and were wielding our swords with both hands, preferring to get a more powerful than accurate swing due to our as of yet unknown enemies. I quickly glanced at Sky to try find any sign of fear or trepidation, but all I found was a look of calmness and determination.

All of a sudden the eerie echoing sound of a war horn could be heard from across the forest signalling the start of the event and the battle.


	17. Chapter 17

As the battle horn rang out through the previously silent and still forest the countless bloodthirsty cries and roars of monsters and the crashing of sword against shield began to rise up and fill the forest. The ground began to shake slightly as the noises of our enemies drew closer and closer without being seen. Far off to our right we suddenly heard the shouts of men, the clash of steel upon steel and the roars of the enraged monsters. I look off in the direction of where I presume the Dragons and Blood Knights were now fighting together against this common enemy.

I quickly turn back to face directly in front of me as I hear the noises draw close. From the darkness of the trees and the on-setting night I began to see shadows with bright glowing red eyes appearing with weapons drawn. The enemy line waited for a second for their true line to form, creating a row of menacing shadows and hundreds of glowing red eyes. At the middle of this line a figure stepped forward out from the shadows. It was a tall, strongly built dark green Orc with yellowed chipped tusks protruding from its lower jaw and dark red eyes, it wore rough leather armour stained with green and red blood. It raised a huge notched axe into the air with one hand and let out a huge battle roar before leading the charge of the Orc and Goblin hordes which lay in wait behind him.

If it was not for my friends to my left and right and the reassuring presence of Sky next to me I would have been out of here within seconds, but instead I dug my boots into the dirt and readied my sword. I quickly look at Sky, who was similarly preparing for the inevitable clash, and give a quick nod to her before running straight at the oncoming horde of monsters with my sword raised slightly with a double handed iron grip. Within a moment I see that sky has joined my side in this counter charge and within a split moment we plummet into the horde of raging Orcs.

I swung my sword downwards where it met the thick skin and flesh of the green blooded Orcs, my sword crashed against the bones of my enemy snapping them with ease and cutting the Orc in half with a spray of warm green blood. I spun around, gathering momentum and swung madly again and again at the monsters taking them down one by one. But soon this continuous swinging had lost its effectiveness as the Orcs began to surround me with large circular wooden with metal rims around them and a iron spike protruding from the centre.

I quickly changed to precision striking and aimed a number of swift hits past the shields dealing out large amounts of damage to the monsters which now completely surrounded me and were closing in fast. I suddenly saw a flash of steel as three of the Orcs lost their heads and fell to the ground dead, behind the three corpses I saw Sky quickly turn back to attack the Orcs that were charging down at her with swords and axes raised. I quickly took the remaining Orcs' confusion and swung my sword in three quick successions taking all of their heads off.

I looked up around me and saw complete carnage, all of my friends were locked in hard combat with a number of enemies ranging from small, dagger wielding goblins to a battle mad, Orc warriors swinging their blood stained weapons madly without caring for any of its allies getting in the way. And still the echoing sound of fights along the forest could be heard. I could see to my left Andrew and Aurora deftly dodging heavy blows from their sluggish enemies' attacks before quickly swinging round and smashing a huge blow upon the weak leather armour and to my right Andrew B smashing back his foes with his large shield and letting Oliver quickly finish up with his heavy and blunt metal hammer. Whereas me and Sky were taking on our own targets with sheer force and blade skills before randomly switching with each other causing confusion upon the enemy giving us a chance to deliver a killing blow.

These simple strategies worked for a while before the number of enraged and blood lusty Orcs began to lessen the effect until we had become completely engulfed by our enemies, no way forward, no way back. We had been surrounded completely by numbers of Orcs who charged with a swinging blade without a moments hesitation. We were now back to back and slowly turning, in a spinning dance of life or death, as we swung and stabbed our swords with as much speed and power that we could muster, just holding off the horde of Orcs which didn't seem to be coming to an end.

As we span slowly killing off the advancing Orcs we began to take heavy damage from attacks directed at our blind sides, iron swords cut into our armour and virtual flesh and spears targeted our weak points with piercing blows. Both of us were down to red health, winded and exhausted, when the Orcs around us pulled back allowing the leader through. We quickly saw that it was the Orc with the sharp tusks and huge two handed notched axe who ordered the attack upon us. It locked its red eyes upon us and slowly began to walk towards us with his axe dragging along the floor.

"Sky." I quickly say as I take out two red vials, health potions, and chucked one to Sky before taking the lid out of mine with my teeth and downing the sweet elixir. Within a moment of me taking the potion I started to see my health bar ever slowly creep up, I saw similar happen to Sky's health as she took the potion in a hurry. We both turned towards the advancing Orc leader and raised our swords with tired arms. The Orc then suddenly charged at us with great speed and power. We quickly adjusted our fighting stance just as the Orc swung his huge double edged battle axe up at us.

We quickly ducked below this surprise attack but I got kicked in the face as I rose my head, knocking me to the ground. He then kept his swing going, spinning him in a complete circle, until the notched blade collided with the hastily met block made by Sky, however this block pushed her backwards and broke through her strong stance. The Orc seeing its opportunity moved back over to me and swung its axe downwards at my head. I rolled quickly out of the way and felt the axe as it ploughed into the ground in the spot where my head was just at.

I quickly got to my feet and moved a little back from the Orc, I now stood at Sky's side. She quickly turned at me and nodded her head as a signal to go on the attack, hoping that its defence would be much weaker than its abnormal attack strength. We sprinted at the Orc and swung our swords, my sword fell from the sky at its head and Sky's sword made a diagonal path at the Orc's stomach. My swing was blocked by the metal shaft of the axe which was raised to block my deadly stirke, sending a shudder through my body. Sky's attack, however, was more successful, it gauged a large and deep cut into the Orc's stomach sending blood red, glowing particles into the sky.

The Orc staggered backwards at this blow, but we pressed on with more precision blows. As the Orc was on its last bit of its small amount of health, due to the many glowing cuts and stabs that covered its green leathery skin, a humongous roar echoed from the trees in front of us. We all, in shock and fear, stared into the dark forest as we heard a tree being ripped from the ground with the massive groans and cracks of dead wood.

All of a sudden a huge tree comes rocketing from the darkness of the forest directly at us. We see it in time to hit the ground letting the tree soar over our heads, but the Orcs were much slower than us and didn't see it until the last moment. We heard the crunch of bones and the wounded cries of the beasts as they got crushed by the flying tree. As we heard the tree crunch to the ground resting we got back up and looked around. practically all of the Orcs were on the ground, dead or fleeing from the monster that had launched the huge tree.

From the darkness of the trees a huge shadow shaking the ground with its heavy footsteps, it was a huge grey skinned troll who had arms as thick as trees and with completely black eyes of emptiness. It looked at the six of us before letting out yet another huge battle cry and charging at Andrew and Aurora, the closest of us to it. As it began to swing its huge arms at the two swift rangers deftly avoided the hits, the four of us began to ran to their aid.

However within moments of the two dodging the attacks, both of them in unison jumped up onto the trolls huge arms, ran up them and planted their strong rapiers into its thick grey neck. As the monster cried in pain and tried swatting them off they repeatedly withdrew and stabbed their swords into its thick neck and spine. Suddenly it swung its head backwards, directly smashing into Aurora sending her flying across the ground and leaving her motionless when she came to a stop on the ground.

"Aurora!" Andrew shouted in pain as he saw Aurora's motionless body upon the ground before quickly turning back to the troll he was currently standing upon. He ripped out Aurora's sword, which had been left protruding from the troll's flesh, and his own sword and with both hands and with a furious power he stabbed down with both swords into the beasts head, smashing through the thick skull and into its soft brain.

The troll stood for a second, motionless and limp, before falling backwards. Andrew quickly retrieved the two blades from its de materialising head and quickly rushed over to the unconscious Aurora not caring about the fact that he had just taken down a fully grown elite monster without taking damage, only caring about the safety and life of Aurora.


	18. Chapter 18

By the time the troll had hit the ground with a great thud, before dissolving into a great cloud of black particles, Andrew had reached Aurora and was leaning down next to her. I quickly looked around us to see nothing but eerie trees covered in fog and ourselves standing, exhausted and injured with our weapons held loosely out our sides. Finally dropping my guard, as the sun rose slowly from the misted horizon into the sky, I ran over to Andrew who was holding Aurora up into a sitting position . Her eyes were slightly opened and I saw that she had only survived the battle by a few stubborn pixels of health which remained in her health bar.

"Stay with us Aurora, its over now. Just hang on a while so we can get back to town." Andrew said hurriedly but with relief that Aurora, although hurt, exhausted and vulnerable, that she was alive and still somewhat conscious. I heard her mumble something in her near unconscious state before she buried her head into Andrew's chest and placed her arms tightly around his neck.

"Come on Andrew we need to get her back to town so we can tend to her wounds and so we can all get some rest." I say quickly with a worried and anxious tone, not wanting to stay in the forest any longer than we needed to. At this Andrew nodded and gently picked Aurora up by her legs and back with her still holding tightly onto his neck. To my right I saw Andrew and Oliver quickly raising their weapons and ready their stance, I look over into the space where their eyes are fixed and see an number of shadows moving through the misty tree line.

Suddenly a crossbow bolt flies from the misted tree line and planted itself heavily into the ground, just in front of me. I look up and see three more bolts flying rapidly from the forest, one deflected by Andrew B's shield and the other two closely missed Aurora and Oliver who had moved quickly to avoid the attacks. A moment after the ranged attack failed a large group of cloaked and hooded figures ominously walked from the dark and misty forest and formed long line to face us. They all wore long black or brown cloaks and hoods which shadowed their faces, except for a figure wearing a skull mask. They numbered around 15 and they all held their hands upon the hilt of sheathed swords upon their leather belts.

I looked a them and saw the usual health bar of a normal monster with a name above it but I also saw small yellow and red crystals floating above their heads. That's when I realised that these people weren't monsters sent by the game but players that seemed intent on fighting. I looked over at my friends to see the realisation of what was happening in their eyes. As I did this the 15 players simultaneously drew their blades and held their sharp Katanas some with both hands others with one hand, but all pointing at us.

I raise my sword to meet theirs and Oliver Andrew B and Sky quickly follow suit. I turn to Andrew and say calmly "Get the hell out of here, we'll meet up with you when we can." before quickly turning back to the opposing players, as I hear Andrew start to run the wall of cloaked players charged down at us , intending to cut off our escape. I held my stance and readied my sword, not knowing how the fight would end.

As the players came within a meter of us the closest swung their swords at us, met by either a block or strong parry, while the others kept running to get behind us to surround us completely. However as our swords clashed we began to quickly move backwards in an attempt to prevent flanking and start our escape to the town which was just visible upon the horizon.

As we began our haphazard retreat we were forced to fight for every inch of ground which we moved backwards, with swords flying at us from every direction and hasty blocks raised to deflect. Swords and shields clashed mercilessly against each other and blades swung through the sky missing us by inches or cutting deep through our armour and into our flesh. Very quickly our weapons were moving in a blur which shimmered wit the reflected light of the rising sun. As we fought for our escape I could see branded marks upon their arms, black coffins half opened with a bone arm within the coffin and a creepy smiling face upon the opening lid of the coffin, this mark was clearly visible on each of the players' arms.

As we began to move into more open ground, coming out of the lightening forest, we spread out a bit more to allow more room for manoeuvres, however this also let them spread out around us quicker without the problem of trees getting in their way. This quickly led to us getting surrounded, bringing our escape to a crashing halt. However as they surrounded us they backed off to form a perfect circle around us. As the four of us moved back to back one of the players, boasting a red crystal and a long notched and blood stained sword, stepped forward with his sword held to his side and a smile on his face.

"You have fought valiantly and with a commendable skill. But your time is at an end. We are the Laughing Coffins and we shall be the last you see of this fictitious world." He said with a growl of a voice as he raised his sword signalling the rest of the players to move in. We raised our weapons slowly in grim defiance knowing that there was no way that all of us were going to get out of this alive.

Suddenly as the laughing coffin guild started to close in to finish off their kills we heard a rush of movement and a roar of battle cries coming from the rising sun. All of us, including the cloaked players quickly turned to see a wave of red and white armour charging over the hill towards us all with weapons raised. From the glare of the sun we quickly saw a large group of Blood Knights charging down at us, who they were after however we weren't completely sure of.

As they drew closer the Laughing Coffin guild swiftly sheathed their swords and sprinted towards the forest which they quickly vanished into. We however stood our ground with our weapons still raised not knowing the Knight's intentions. But as the group of 25 fully armed and armoured Knights reached us the leader of the group ordered a small scouting party of 5 men carrying spears to race after the cloaked players in an attempt to track them down and then walked up to us with his sword held at his side.

"I see you've been having trouble with these, "Coffins" I believe they call themselves." He said in an annoyed voice as he sheathed his blade and put his group at ease. "Those murderers got 5 of my guys before we could do anything. After a little fight they retreated and obviously came across you lot. Did you loose anybody in your attack?" he asked curiously but with sincerity.

"Not as far as we know as we had sent two of our friends, one of them badly hurt, straight to the town while we stalled them. But apart from that we've all stayed alive." I say slowly now beginning to worry about Andrew and Aurora. "But do you know anything else about the Laughing Coffins as this must be one of the first player killer groups of that size and danger?" I ask seriously, hoping that they would have more information than myself.

"None at all, but we think they were formed recently, apart from that and the fact that they have no problems with killing we know nothing. And we did see a person carrying another, seemingly in a hurry, rushing back to town so that could be your friends." He replied as the scouts he had sent out returned glumly with no success. "Well we better be on our way, need to report back to Heathcliff on this and the event battle." He said in a way of farewell.

"Well thanks for the help with the Coffins." I say before the commander orders the group to move out and walk towards the edge of the forest, seemingly still wanting to find the Coffins. I look to my friends who had stayed silent this whole time, Oliver and Andrew B obviously annoyed at the encounter with the Knights which they dislike so much and Sky who looked distracted and with her mind somewhere else.

"Can we get moving now, we need to make sure Andrew and Aurora got back safely." She said in a quiet voice which clearly showed the worry that she held for the safety of her friends. I nod and we start running back to the village yet again with no idea to what would await us within the walls of the town.


	19. Chapter 19

As we reached the splintered and creaking wooded gates of the stone walled town the sun reflected off of the golden bell which was ringing out the morning within its high grey stone tower, with a chime that resounded throughout the town. As we pushed the gates open slowly we heard the sounds of cheering and the voices of many people from behind the gates. As we opened the gates a little wider we saw that the whole town was gathered in front of the gates cheering and talking happily between themselves. When the gates were opened enough to get through Andrew B walked through them with a smug grin and an arrogant air about him, obviously thinking that this celebration had been held to honour our victorious return after defending the people's village.

I roll my eyes at him and I hear Sky sigh in impatience as we slowly walk in to see that the citizens' attention was focused solely upon a large wooden stage from which a music band was playing their songs to the cheering crowds. The lead singer was a girl with long pink hair and held a red electric guitar and was going at her guitar with everything she had. The guitarist to her right was a little more reserved in her playing of her acoustic guitar and sported light brown hair which was tied back into a long pony tail. On the lead's left was a violinist who's hands were moving in a blur and short black hair going mad through the air. Behind them all sat the drummer who had long flowing snow white hair and was wielding her drum sticks with amazing speed and precision producing a speedy beat at which the band could keep smoothly in time with.

The amplified sound of their skilfully played instruments echoed through the many streets that led from the large paved town entrance, the music itself resembled 1980s European rock from the Electric guitar and drums and with a slight eastern feel to it from the combination of violin and acoustic accompanied by lyrics of determination rising from dark times. This was the first player band I had seen within Aincrad and from the short section we had listened into it was some of the best music I had heard since the start of this game. Wondering why a band would be playing this early in the morning I looked around the square where i quickly noticed a number of decorations hanging from buildings and brightly coloured bunting strung from house to house. I also saw a large brass clock hanging above the stage with its hands showing that it was 6:23 AM, 1st January 2024. New Year's celebrations.

As the music picked up in pace and the electric guitar went into a solo I slowed down and stopped to listen for a while momentarily forgetting our purpose within the town. However quickly after stopping to listen I feel a very strong grip on my shoulder dragging me away from the crowd, I quickly see that it's a very irritated looking Sky who doesn't seem the least bit interested in the concert and very much annoyed that I was. Knowing it was a bad idea to annoy her any more and any attempt to release her grip would be pointless I didn't try to stop her. Andrew and Oliver followed suit, however neither of them looked too interested in the concert especially after it had taken advantage of Andrew B in such a way that hurt his pride deeply.

As we walked from the busy town entrance through the wide, dry cobble paved streets, lined by peach stone buildings we came across many decorations hanging from houses all in bright colours and people milling about the town in merry moods and a good number of them looking very drunk as they moved around looking form hand holds before they fell over after every 5 steps. We were heading to the Prancing Pony inn, a medium sized, popular inn of a good standard which was located in the central area of the town and therefore saw good business pass through its doors on a regular basis and played a major role in the town due to its large and long established bar which boasted the best ale in the whole floor.

It took a few minutes to reach the large road, connected to the town centre, of which the Prancing Pony belonged to. The door was an old thick wooden door reinforced by metal strips and had a large keyhole but no handle, above the door hung a wooden depiction of a prancing pony with the inn's name painted in bright red upon it, the norm for any bar or inn to have. The light brown curtains behind the single paned square windows were closed but a soft yellow glow of candle light was visible alongside the many voices which could be heard from within.

Sky, who had been moving at a very fast pace way out in front of the three of us, pushed open the door which rang a small golden bell which could only just be heard over the talk. As we walked in the people sitting at tables looked up momentarily but then went back to their tankards, conversations and card games without a second glance or thought about us. The four of us, still in our armour, walked up to the bar and waited for the bartender, a stubborn but wise elderly man. When he came over to us after serving another customer I asked him about Andrew and Aurora.

"Have two rapier wielders come back through here, one carrying the other?" I ask anxiously with my fists clenched on the polished bar top, hoping that they had got here safely.

"Yer, I've seen them. Their in room 3 upstairs. But the girl looked in a pretty bad shape, I just hope she's ok." The bartender replied slowly and with concern as he pointed towards the staircase to the side of the bar. As he said this Sky breathed a sigh of relief and we all stopped fearing the worst, however we were all still worried about Aurora not knowing how bad her injuries were and how they would effect her. We rushed up the stairs causing a racket of our heavy boots smashing against the wooden stairs and then across the narrow wooden landing which had 3 doors on either side of the hallway, each with a brass number and a round brass door knob above a small keyhole. We went straight to the door with the number 3 upon it and pushed open the unlocked door into the medium sized room with a large double bed, a cupboard, a desk and a window which faced out towards the sun on the left side of the room.

Inside the room Aurora lay on her side facing the window under the covers of the bed, only moving around slightly every so often, her heavier pieces of sturdy metal armour had been placed on the table next to her sheathed rapier. Next to Andrew sat on a strong wooden chair, still in all of his gear and sword at his belt, holding Aurora's hand tightly as he looked out of the window out over the town and to the brightening horizon. As we pushed open the door Andrew looked up towards us with a look of relief on his face.

Sky rushed over next to the bed to see that Aurora was still alive and doing well, once she was content with what she saw she turned her attention to Andrew and asked slowly. "How is she?"

"Better than she was half an hour ago, I can tell you that much. But seriously as far as I can tell she's okay, but we'll know properly when she wakes up. but for now let her sleep." He said with some thought and a quick glance at the sleeping Aurora.

"What I want to know is why she didn't use the full heal crystal I gave her? Would have made things so much easier." Oliver asked curiously but with a slight edge of impatience and annoyance.

"I don't know, probably wanted to save it for later, or the fact that she was pretty much unconscious during most of it might have made that idea slip from her mind." Andrew came to her defence quickly with an irritated look at Oliver.

"The fact that it was harder doesn't make much difference now that we are all here now though, does it? Except that we sort of owe the Blood Knights for saving our arses." Andrew B intervened quickly before any more was said by Andrew or Oliver. "Also, did you get anything from that Troll that you two killed." He continued, quickly changing the subject.

"Yes, I got a sword drop from it. Haven't looked what it is yet though."Andrew answered slowly as he opened up his inventory and withdrew his weapon drop.


	20. Chapter 20

A moment after he pressed the button in his inventory to withdraw the sword a long bright yellow glowing shape appeared in the air above him and began to form into a more distinct and outlined shape of a blade. Within a second the sword had materialised and fell down into Andrew's open hand. The hilt of the blade which he held onto was made from a pure white silver, the hand grip was wrapped with deep burgundy leather, the pommel was a perfect circle surrounding a blood red ruby encrusted within the pure silver. The hand guard was an intricate and winding pattern of thick golden strands which formed a sturdy hand guard, allowing space for the user to move their hands. The blade was sheathed in a pure white hardened leather sheath which had an image of an eagle in flight decorated upon it with golden leaf at the top of the sheath.

Andrew stood up from his chair and with a very fast movement of his hand withdrew the blade from its sheath, while still holding the sheath in his left hand. He held the blade up in front of him with the flat of the blade facing towards him. It, like the main section of the hilt, was made from pure silver which looked sharp enough to slice through anything that may get in its way. Running down the middle of the silver blade was a filling of dark burnished gold, this golden section held an inscription upon it which read "Seven times down. Eight times up". After quickly inspecting the blade he swiped the blade with great force causing the air around it to whistle from the sword's precise speed.

"Try not to hit us please." I say after quickly moving backwards from Andrew, trying to avoid getting hit from the unexpected swipe.

Sky looked at the blade carefully and asked curiously. "What is the sword called? As it's obviously either a rare drop, as I doubt anyone here has seen it, or was a one time drop from the troll."

Andrew reopened his inventory and scrolled down to the sword with a few flicks of his finger before saying. "It says its called Ambrose. Weird name for a sword, but it sounds good in my opinion, wonder how strong it is as a rapier though." He said in a contemplative yet content way at his new sword. He then sheathed Ambrose, quickly took off his old blade and strapped the white leather sheath to his rough brown belt. He then placed his sword in his inventory by hitting a button in his inventory which caused it to glow bright yellow and seemingly de-materialise into his inventory.

"Anyway what actually happened with the Blood Knights?" Andrew asked us, but to no-one in particular.

Oliver was the one who answered Andrew's question before any of us could say any thing. "We were falling back to the town when the coffins surrounded us." He began before getting quickly interrupted by Andrew.

"Coffins?" He asked, confused at the name Oliver had used.

"Right yer, the players were all a part of a guild called the Laughing Coffin, probably one of the first player killer guild of that size and skill. Anyway, they surrounded us when we moved into open ground and put us into a last stand sort of fight against the 20 or so of them around us. Not too long after this began a large party of Blood Knights turned up and scared the dammed Coffins back off into the forest and by what their commander had said, these guys had killed a few of the Blood Knights before moving on to us." He finished his explanation.

"So now you basically owe the Blood Knights for pretty much saving you lot out there." Andrew commented, realising instantly why Oliver and Andrew B were both irritated. "I still don't understand why you're so against them." He continued quietly, not really intending for anyone to hear him. However all of us do hear him and I simply roll my eyes.

"You probably wouldn't understand. Anyway I had better be going as I've got a shop to attend to as it's getting close to opening hours. Hope Aurora gets back to normal quickly, cya." He announced to the room before opening the door and departing to get to his shop up on the 48th floor before players turned up expecting to buy things but find an empty building.

"I had better go as well, make sure all is okay with my house and then go help out with Oliver's shop." He said as a farewell before he to left the room.

"Why does he always leave within 20 seconds of Oliver going somewhere, you would have thought they were a couple or something." Sky said with an annoyed shake of her head as me and Andrew laughed at the truth behind the words and the fact that we all knew that nothing past being extremely good friends would pass between Oliver and Andrew B.

"Speaking of couples..." I say slowly looking at Andrew with a smug grin.

Andrew looks at me with an annoyed glance and Sky starts laughing a bit. "What about them?" He asks slowly, but from my silence he quickly realises what I'm talking about and quickly continues. "Whoa, my private life is none of your business and you know damn well what's going on, you were the one who made sure it did happen way back when you met Aurora."

"Yer, Yer. Anyway where's your house Sky, so we know where to find you if we need you for something." I ask Sky out of curiosity and necessity before I to left to attend my forgery.

Sky looks at me, hesitates to think and then says. "I generally just sleep in the inn closest to the front-line, just makes everything easier and quicker for me to get there without having to bother with floor portals."

"Why don't you move in with Steven then, he's got a big enough house considering the fact that he lives alone." Said a quiet voice from the bed before anyone could suggest anything else. All of us looked in surprise at the bed to see Aurora, eyes open, moving into a sitting position with her back against the wooden head rest. Sky, went to hug her and Andrew went back to holding her hand tightly.

However I just look at her and ask. "How long have you been in awake and how do you feel?" suspecting that she had deliberately feigned sleep to listen into our conversation for a while.

"Not long, long enough to hear Andrew B to leave and your conversation afterwards and I feel fine, thank you." She says with a smug, yet slightly innocent looking grin.

"And a great use of my own words I must say." I say quietly with a shake of my head and a smile after realising that she had taken my words from when I suggested that she lived with Andrew.

"So what do you say Sky? Would you be good living in a house with Steven so that you have a stable house and we know that your safe." She continued looking at the still somewhat caught of guard Sky.

She gave me a cautious yet curious glance, while thinking through her options given to her at time before sighing and saying. "Yer, why not then." At this Aurora smiled and Andrew was trying to suppress a laugh.

"Well you know where my house is, so yer." I say as I open up my inventory and send her a key to my house. "As long as you don't move things till I get back, I'll be happy as I've got to get back to my forgery, as like Andrew B and Oliver I have a business to run. So I suppose I'll see you lot later then." I say before opening the door and walking down the hallway to exit the Prancing Pony inn.


	21. Chapter 21

I closed the glass case over the ornate sword made from shining silver and burnished iron encrusted with a number of precious gems, this was my latest creation from my forgery which I was putting up for general sale in the shop which stood next to my forgery connected by a small pathway leading out from the back of the shop. As I looked in pride at my work and locked the glass cabinet with a small brass key which I quickly placed back into my inventory, I heard the door behind me open and the bell placed above the door ring out. I turn to see Andrew walking through the door in a simple dark blue shirt and jeans, no armour or weapons present, unlike me who walked around with a sheathed dagger on my belt at all times.

He walks up beside me and looks in awe at the blade which I had just locked away. "Always like just coming in and looking at the weapons and such that you make." He says shortly making me think of the numerous times I had seen him come into the shop with seemingly no other reason but to look around. At his words I laugh a bit and then walk over to and behind the counter where I pick up a closed bottle of whiskey, open it with a bottle opener and take a short swig from it. "You drink?" Andrew says a little surprised.

"Why not, I only drink a bottle or two a week so it's not as if I even get drunk from it. And I don't usually drink at work but after making that sword I needed one." I say indifferently as in my opinion in this world all the age restrictions from the real world no longer applied in any way. I take another swig from the glass bottle and place it back under the counter. "So hows things going as we haven't spoken for like a week now?" I ask Andrew out of interest.

"Not much really, Aurora has started going back to the front lines a couple of days ago, so I guess that's one good thing. Apart from that it's just back to life as it was, nothing too special or mad. But what about you? How has these two weeks with Sky been? As you've not shared a house with someone since way back in the starter floors with me." He answers plainly and continued to ask the question without hesitation.

"Yer it's been fine with her at my house, makes things much easier with two people and it means I can have some company without the need to go out somewhere. But she is a bit of a neat freak when it comes to some things, so for once my house isn't a complete mess of paperwork, maps and random metal files scattered around the floor, but I suppose that's a good thing that the house is finally getting tidied. She's also said that she's going to come and do some things down at the forge, so that should be interesting to see what happens with that. But yer it's been nice." I say each sentence after a bit of thought of the two weeks that Sky had started living in my house, within a day the house had been cleaned and things were stored in a tidy and ordered way and during this week both of us had started to redecorate the house which killed a lot of time but was worth the time.

"Now what do you actually want?"I asked Andrew seeing that he was thinking over something and looking a bit awkward while his hands never stayed still. "Come on now I've known you for however many years now, I know when you're not saying something." I continue trying to persuade him to come out with whatever was on his mind.

He looked up at me in the eyes and said quietly. "I need you to make me a ring."

I gave him a long hard look as I registered what he had just said and what it possibly implied, so I slowly answered. "How many do you need and when for?"

"Two golden band rings and one very ornate ring. And as for timing, whenever you can do them for, I don't particularity mind" He replied slowly no longer looking at me, but at some of my swords as his face started turning red.

"I should be able to get them done within the month." I say after quickly thinking of how long it may take me to get three rings completed, not very long if I work at it without too many distractions. "Bit of a surprise if this is what I think it is." I say as I pick my bottle back up from the counter and take a longer swig from it, letting the alcohol burn down my throat.

"How is it a surprise, you were implying it two weeks ago. Anyway I would like you to be the best man at the wedding if all goes to plan." He says more bravely this time but almost waiting for his request to be shot down in flames. At this my hand stopped the bottle just from my lips and a wave of shock goes through me, Andrew proposing was expected but this wasn't.

I placed the bottle heavily back onto the wooden counter and said with a raised eyebrow. "Are you sure you want me as best man for this?"

"Well if you'd rather not, it's okay." Andrew said quickly worried that he had gone too far in asking this of me.

"No, I'll do it, it would be an honour. And if your going for the full works of a ceremony how are you going to do it?" I ask him, not knowing how things worked in the virtual world when it came down to ceremonies and events such as this.

"This is why I wanted you as best man, so that you could help out." He replied with a smile. "Just don't tell anyone about any of this unless I say so, as I don't know how she will react to it and if everyone knows about it it's likely going to be found out by her somehow which will ruin everything." He continued seriously, worried at the prospect of this becoming common knowledge before he was ready for it to be so.

"Well If there's anything I can do to help, I will do the best that I can to make sure this goes as smoothly as it can. And don't worry about the rings, I'll start the draw ups today so you can see my ideas for them later." I say with sincerity knowing how important this is for my friend.

"Thanks, well I had better get going as me and Aurora are going out for the afternoon and evening. Cya later then." He says back to his normal self before turning and leaving the shop without another word. I take another swig from my bottle and walked over to a large metal filing drawer where I take out a wad of paper and a couple of pencils. I then move into the shop's back room, sit down at a wooden table lit by a shaded lamp and got down to work for designing the wedding rings.


	22. Chapter 22

The full moon was shining a bright white in the star filled night sky which hung above me as I walked through the dusty dirt footpath which trailed through the forest of gargantuan pine trees which hid the sky and its many lights from reaching the shadowed ground. My boots kicked up a small puff of dust as they fell silently along the bone dry and silhouetted ground and snapped the occasional twig which seemed to be as loud as a falling branch in this dark silence that had enveloped the forest around me. However I soon came to the opening out of the forest which was illuminated by the glowing full moon above and with the dark green pine canopy now behind me the thousands of shining stars were now visible in all their ancient and grand glory, however even the beauty of the night sky was spoiled by the thought that none of it existed and was nothing but a computer generated texture created to fool us.

Ahead of me up a slight hill I could see the soft glow of lights shining through the drawn curtains of my house, at first this worried me that the lights were on, but I quickly remembered that Sky was now living with me in the house and the lights must mean that she was home, not surprising considering the late hour. As I began walking towards the house and up the small hill I opened my inventory and took out a small silver key which I quickly opened the door with as I reached the house. As I opened the door I could hear the sound of a guitar playing a slow and soft melody coming from the front room. I quietly closed the front door and walked down the dark hallway towards the front room with the sound of my footsteps absorbed by the carpet.

When I reached the door I looked in and saw Sky sitting down on the dark red fabric sofa facing away from the door playing a light brown acoustic guitar and humming out a slow tune in time with her guitar chords, she did this with a lone lamp lighting the room. I stood in the doorway, leaning against the wall, as she skilfully played out the song which strangely echoed through the house. However not long after I started listening she stopped playing mid note and turned around to see me standing in the doorway, she had a look of someone caught breaking the rules by a teacher.

"How long have you been home and why were you out so late?" She asks me quickly as she swiftly puts her guitar down on the floor, leaning it up against the sofa.

"I've been in for a couple of minutes and I was out late working on some important stuff down at the forge. And I never knew you could play guitar that well." I answer her questions in an indifferent tone but then went on to praise her skills with admiration. As I spoke I walked over and around the sofa to sit down next to Sky.

"Yer, I used to play guitar back in the real world and its literally the same in this world except for a dammed music skill which seems intent on stopping me playing well or anything like how I used to play." She said slowly but with annoyance clear in her voice.

"Honestly what I just heard of you sounded amazing, much better than anything that I could do at least." I say sincerely remembering my track record with instruments and musical programs from my time back in school.

At that she gave a small laugh and said. "Yer, I Aurora told me about your attempts at playing a guitar a while ago."

"I can play better in the real world, but yes that attempt was... yer pretty shocking I must say." I say with a smile as I thought of the time where Aurora had thrown the guitar out of the upstairs window of Andrew's house due to the shocking noise that I was creating while trying to play a simple song. That's when I realised that I knew nothing of Sky's past, yet I lived with her, fought with her, shared experiences with her yet knew nothing of her. "So were you a musician of some sort back in the real world?"

She looked down at her guitar and began speaking. "Back in the real world I was a normal person really, still at school with a good amount of friends and with music and design technology being my favourite and best subjects. I had been learning to play guitar since like 7 years old, so I was one of the best in the year when it came to practical music grades. Back then my family wasn't very rich so when they first announced the nerve gear I knew that there was no way that my parents could get it for me. So I took up a job at friend's parent's garage where I worked fixing cars and the odd bike, then in my spare time I was out with my guitar busking. I saved up all of this money that I had been earning solely to buy a nerve gear system and to get one of the 10,000 copies of Sword Art Online. I had the game pre-ordered, so when it came out it was waiting at home in a parcel after I had got home from school. I pushed it in logged in and that's my story for coming into this world." She ended her short recount of her time before Aincrad in a sad voice, obviously missing her life outside of the virtual world. "But what about you then? Knowing you its got to be interesting or dead boring." she asked with interest.

Knowing that I would have to eventually recall my life before the game so without much hesitation I began. "My life was pretty boring back then, nothing out of the usual happened and nothing particularly special happened in my life, until the game. I met Oliver and Andrew B all the way back in the first year of primary school but only really became friends in the 5th year due to our interests and knowledge of Pokemon, a game which we could all contribute our knowledge to and talk in depth about that brought us together. Then when secondary school came around Oliver went to a different school to me but Andrew B was coming to the same school, however we were in different forms and only saw each other in break and lunchtimes. In this year I met Andrew, yet another Pokemon fan and a person which I could easily talk to. I considered me, him and the rest of our friends as part of an outcast group away from the rest of the chavs and poofs that plagued our form and year due to our personalities and interests, but this didn't really bother me too much. Then when they announced that a fully integrated VR system was coming out both of instantly vowed to own one of the systems alongside with Sword Art Online. So we went home from school and entered this world, but at this point I had no idea that Oliver or Andrew B owned SAO, so it started off as just me and Andrew."

"Wow that really wasn't particularly interesting was it." Sky commented with a laugh after I had finished my recounting of my time in the real world, although I had not mentioned much about my personal life which I believed to be to trivial and unimportant to recount.

"Yer, a good bit of my life was on computers and the other half was inside of stories and books." I say with a smile at my old life.

"Hey, why don't we go out tomorrow, meet up with Aurora and Andrew by the lake have a picnic or something. Get away from life for a while and relax." She said abruptly changing the subject, obviously not wanting to remember the life she previously owned and had lost to this game.

"Sure, sounds like a good idea." I say at the thought of relaxing outside in the sun for a day.

"Just no weapons." She says as she gets up and walks over to the door and up the stairs off to bed. I soon follow her, allowing the fatigue of the day to get to me.


	23. Chapter 23

"OI WAKE UP!" At this shout I abruptly woke up and groggily raised my head with my eyes just opened and looked over towards where the shout had come from, Sky stood just out side the door to my bedroom with crossed arms. She wore a light blue shirt and grey trousers, her hair was loose and flowed down her back and no weapon could be seen on her. I quickly wipe my eyes and look out of the window to my left, it was only staring to get light outside and the sun had yet to have risen above the horizon, I turned back to Sky and asked in a tired and irritated voice. "What the hell is the time?"

"Errmm, something around half five in the morning." She answered in an faked innocent voice and with a smile. "I thought as we were going out today, might as well get up early to make sure everything is ready and so that we don't turn up late." She continued in a balanced tone but obviously still a bit smug about waking me up this early in the morning. "Well now that you're awake, somewhat awake, I'm going to get some breakfast started. So get up quickly or it will get cold and don't just go back to sleep you lazy sod." She said before disappearing from the doorway.

"Why this early though?!" I say to myself quietly, although I knew she did it to annoy me. But as I was now awake and it was getting lighter outside I decided I had might as well get up. I got out of my plain wooden bed and opened up my inventory as I walked across my dark brown painted room, from my inventory I equipped an orange shirt, grey trousers and heavy leather walking boots, I also equipped my sheathed dagger to the back of my belt and pulled my shirt over it, hiding it. from there I looked out the window to see the sleepy canopy of the waking pine forest and a small number of birds beginning their morningly flights. I turned back and walked down the wide hallway which had a few doors leading off of it into a variety of different rooms. Nearer to the staircase was an open section of the hallway which I could look downstairs towards the doorway, the entrance hallway and somewhat into the dining room.

As I walked down the spiral dark wood stairs to the ground floor I could heard Sky moving around in the kitchen and I could hear and smell bacon being fried. I walked through the dining room door into the dining room which had the kitchen directly connected to it. I walked past the cushioned oak chairs which stood under the large polished mahogany table and into the white tile wall kitchen lit by a large window above the cooking area.

"You should probably have more oil in that." I say to Sky as I look at the frying pan which held a number of sizzling pieces of bacon which had already cooked through any oil that Sky had placed into the pan.

"Why don't you do it then as you seem to know best when it comes to frying things." She says in an accusatory and defensive way before moving out of the way, letting me get to the frying pan. "I'm cooking the eggs though, you always split the yolks when cracking them into the pan." She continues as she takes out a box of eggs from the cupboard along with another, smaller pan from another cupboard which held all of the pans and pots.

"I never said I knew best it's just that I've cooked enough bacon on open flames as a scout to know how much oil is needed. Anyway how many pieces do you want?" I say trying not to sound too arrogant, although failing at it as I pour a measured amount of sunflower oil into the pan in front of me making it sizzle and spit with renewed effort.

"3 pieces would be nice, how many eggs do you want?"She answered ignoring my first comment

"Just the one please." I say my usual answer to the question as Sky moves up next to me with the other pan, adds oil to the pan and places it on the hob. We were cooking for the next couple of minutes before all of the food was finished and we both ended up with bacon and egg sandwiches which we sat down at the table to eat.

"So what are the plans for today then, as all I know so far is that we are going out and meeting Andrew and Aurora? I ask Sky after swallowing a large chunk of my sandwich.

"Well we might meet up with them, but I sort of messaged them about this about 11 O'clock last night, soooooo, I don't know what they are doing but I'm sure they will come. Apart from that I thought we could go out for a walk for a couple of hours as I haven't explored the place properly yet, go down by the lakes, maybe go shopping for a while." She laid out her plans with an excited tone. Suddenly as if hearing our conversation a panel appeared in front of Sky, a message from Aurora. "Okay well that's convenient. Anyway she says yes to going out and that we should meet up around twelvish down by the lakes, simple enough." She summarised the message.

"Okay, so cause you got us up so early we have about 6 hours to kill before we meet up, so what do we do?" I say in an inquiring voice, wondering what would follow.

"Well I suppose we could go for a walk in the forests for a couple of hours, this floor has enough of them." She says after a few seconds of thought.

"Okay might as well get going then, also if we go near to the forge I need to pop in and sort some things out." I say with a thought to the project which I had just finished and was now waiting on my workbench in the forge.

"Okay, just don't get distracted and start making something new while your in there." She says in a warning tone. We then, after finishing our breakfast, place the used pans in a small bucket within the sink to be washed up later and moved from the dining room to the door of the house. I opened the door, let Sky through the door then myself and then turning to close it and lock it using the silver key I had taken from my inventory.

We walked down the slightly declined dirt path from the house onto the main path where we turned left and began walking towards the rising pine forest. The ancient pine forest stood silently and motionless in the darkness of the morning, however the first signs of wildlife was showing itself in the form of scurrying squirrels and the occasional bird song high in the trees.

As we walked, we walked side by side with our steps in unison and quietly talked about our time within Aincrad while watching the forest slowly come to life with the sounds of hundreds of animals and the strong winds whistling through trees.

From our talk I had found out that Sky had come into the game, knowing that none of her friends would join her. When we were all kindly informed by Kayaba of our fate she broke down at the realisation of loosing her family and friends while in this world and had found it near impossible to adapt to this world. However a while into the game starting she was still stuck on floor one as the original front line had just broke through the third floor, this is when instead of despair she felt sheer rage and a need for revenge came over her. This is when she desired to become a front liner to contribute to the battle force, in a way doing her bit for the war. However in the time that the frontline had started moving forward she was still at level 1 and so was no where near to having the needed experience and skills to be up at the frontline. So like the front liners had done originally she began to power train practically all day every day, however the best training spots had been taken by guilds and higher leveled players so her progress was slow. However as more and more floors were opened up, more and more training areas opened up allowing her to speed up her training up to now where she had joined the main front line where she had met Aurora. After seeing our guild in a true fight, a boss battle on the 38th floor, she had asked Aurora for some training and she had sent her to me.

As she finished up her story we came to a piece of the forest which I recognised to be near to the forge, so I made a turn off of the path and through the thick of the woods. A few minutes of walking through the forest and we reached the edge of it and could see the forge silhouetted against the sun which hung just above the horizon. We walked over to the path and down to the forge which stood eerily silent and motionless. As we reached the door I opened it using a gold key from my inventory and pushed the heavy wooden door open with a creak.

I walked into the forge, closely followed by Sky, and walked over to the blast furnace which I started up a blazing fire, by pressing a button on a menu panel instead of taking ages to manually set a fire going, which lit the room with a soft orange glow and began to heat the room. Sky was walking around the room looking at all of my tools and figuring out what each of pieces of equipment was used for, as she did this I walked over to my workbench and covertly picked up a small green velvet box and placed it in a pocket without her seeing it.

"So welcome to my forge I suppose, as you haven't been in here before have you?" I ask her realising that her curiosity was probably down to the fact that she had yet to have a proper look around before now.

"It's not as dark and depressing as I thought it would be, a lot more sizes of hammer as well. Must be nice to work in a warm and safe place all on your own." She said slowly as she walked around slowly still looking at the tools and admiring the blades which hung on the stone wall.

"Yer, it's nice in here to get away from the battles and hammering metal is a good therapy in a way, also a good way to make some money as quality weapons are always in demand." I say in agreement as I moved over to my metals shelf and rearranged the heavy ingots into a more orderly way. "So didn't you say something about working down here for a bit?"

"Yer, as I don't have a proper job right now and having a good forge skill would be useful and generally it seems an interesting thing to do when away from the front line." She confirmed after a few seconds of thought. She opened her menu with practiced ease and checked the time. "Wow, it's still only 8, still got about 4 hours till noon."

"Really, still got about 3 and a half hours to do something, any ideas?" I ask honestly wondering how to spend the spare time which we had.

"Well we could go back for a walk but I don't think either of us want to do that right now." She remarked with a smile knwoing that we both prefered it in here, in the warm. "Hey why don't you teach me some stuff about forging?" She suggests in an excited voice as she pushes herself up onto the black anvil.

"Yeh, might aswell, but what about? 'don't get distracted and start making something new while your in there.'" I quote Sky's previous words.

"Oh well, we're here now with hours to spare so why not." She says disregarding her own words from before.

"So then, what do you want to do, Blades, shields, hammers, other weaponry, armours or jewelry?" I ask Sky going through the list of things which I knew how to make.

"Well thats a bit of big list. How about we do some jewelry, seems the easiest and it wont take too long." She decided as she looked around the intricate and complicated works of war which were on display around the walls compared to a small glass cabinet which held a number of shining rings and encrusted necklaces.

At that I turned on my main furnace and brought out the needed tools for the job, I then placed an ingot of silver in a large stone cauldron in the main furnace and a smaller amount in a smaller stone cup in the blast furnace both using metal tongs and got to work showing Sky how everything worked and teaching her techniques of forming metal I had learned from experience.


	24. Chapter 24

After a few hours of work later Sky had made a simple band ring of gold with a small rose ruby encrusted within it, which she now wore on her left hand, and a silver chain necklace with a small emerald in the shape of a leaf connected to laced to the bottom of it using a thin gold lace, which hung from her neck.

I was surprised to find out that she had some skill in smithing and had a very steady hand which could cut gems precisely without visible flaws. She herself was very pleased with her work and was similarly surprised that she could create such things with only words of advice and help from me after a few demonstrations in which I showed her the basics and a few of the more advanced methods.

"So when do you intend to come work here for while, as you have some good skill and with some training could easily begin to create high level weapons or make some money off of the amazing jewelry which you seem to be able to make." I compliment her work with the implications that I would like to see more works from her.

"Whenever you want me to start I guess and it was surprisingly calming and the ring and necklace are beautiful." She answered in a content voice as she continued to admire her work. She then walked over to the glass cabinet and looked in awe at all of the pieces that were stored within it. "WOW, these are amazing Steven, how the hell do you make them , I mean it's not as if you did this sort of thing back in the real world."

"About a year of training and A LOT of paitience for when things go wrong and considering I've been close to throwing things across the room on some occasions when I've broken or ruined a piece late into it's creation." I inform her in a sincere voice trying to put across that these things don't happen overnight "Jewelry is one thing as it's easy to create with the help of the game's system and the fact that it has no level attatched to it helps. Whereas weapons take time to make even with the game's system, then every weapon has a level and stats which need to be high for it to be any use and finally you need a tonne more high level and rare materials to keep on top of your weapon demands. Not easy at this stage in the game, I can tell you that."

I then open up my inventory to bring out a rare metal which could be used in forging but instead I see the time and close it quickly. "Well it's just gone 11 O'clock, soooo we had better get things put away and get moving if we want to meet up with Andrew and Aurora on time." I comment prompting Sky to look at the time for herself with a slight shock at how fast the hours had gone. We then quickly put the equipment that was still lying around the forge back where they belonged and placed the spare metal on the metal shelves or, in the case of the filings and very small pieces, into the stone cups withing the fires.

Once we had finished cleaning up I doused the flames of the blast furnace and flames of the main furnace producing large clouds of white steam and leaving the room dark and void of much colour. We then left the forge through the heavy wooden door which I locked using the golden key as I did every night after finishing work.

"We were meeting them by the lakes weren't we?" I ask Sky.

"Yer, by the big lake near our house." She quickly confirmed.

"This way then." I say after thinking of the fastest route to our destination, straight through the middle of the forest until we reached a stone path which we would follow all the way to the banks of the lake where we would find and meet up with Andrew and Aurora.

The Sun now blazed high in the bright blue in its' full glory covering the whole floor with golden light and a warmth that warmed the cold water of the many shimmering lakes and rivers that forever flowed through the landscape of this floor. As we walked through the forest we quickly found out that since this morning it had come truly to life with hundreds of animals such as huge deer and rare pure white horses roaming for food and countless birds flying from tree to tree each with a different birdsong creating a symphony which the forest moved to.

It took a little while to arrive at the cobbled pathway, but once on it we walked passed a couple of other hikers who were following this trail and within a few minutes we came into sight of a large round lake with deep blue water which shimmered in the sunlight as it moved ever so slowly around creating small waves on the grassy banks and creating a lapping sound similar to the sea.

As we walked around the perimeter of the lake looking for a shaded spot close to the lake we spotted two figures, one in faint pink and the other in bright red, walking in our direction. As we kept walking one the one in the pink had obviously seen us and was waving madly at us and we could see the one in the red shaking his head slightly at his companion. As we moved closer, sure enough, it was Andrew and Aurora.

Aurora, who had been waving once she had seen us, wore a long faint pink dress embroided with images of pink flowers, had her silky brown hair loose down her back and wore simple pink shoes. Andrew a bit more reserved wore a bright red T-shirt and grey trousers along with leather boots, as usual his curly brown hair was in a complete mess.

As we came together Aurora and Sky went to hug each other in greeting and I went in to give Andrew a one armed hug. As I hugged Andrew with one arm, I pulled out the small velvet box with my other arm and placed it into one of Andrew's hands before pulling away. Andrew quickly looked down at the box in slight confusion and then looked up at me with a hard stare as he hid the box in a pocket in his trousers. Aurora, after releasing Sky moved in to give me a hug and Sky went to give Andrew a hug.

"Haven't been on this floor for ages now, weather is much better than on our floor as well." Came the remark from Aurora who had a huge smile on her face and was looking into the clear sky above us, she was now holding hands with Andrew who stood next to her.

"Yer, this is a pretty good day for this floor, sometimes we can have huge thunderstorms which flood the lakes by quite a bit. So how have you two been as I haven't seen you properly for a few weeks now?" I say feigning ignorance to Andrew's visit a few days ago.

"It's been getting better since the battle and I've started to go back up to the front lines where we've nearly got through the 54th floor. Apart from that everything is back to normal really so it's all good I suppose." Aurora says quickly with a quick look at Andrew who nodded slowly in agreement.

"Well lets find a good spot to sit down and set up a picnic." Sky said to stop a conversation starting while we were all standing up facing each other somewhat awkwardly. We all agreed to this and we quickly looked around for a good spot before walking over to a grassy patch next to the bank of the river with a tree behind us shading the area we went and sat in. From here we could see all the way around the lake, at various points there were men sitting with fishing poles cast out into the deep waters and on occasion we all saw a large shadow move under the water, obviously the fishermen's ultimate catch, at the other side of the river stood a small wooden pier which was connected to a dirt path which led into the forest. Above us we could hear the wind slowly rustling through the trees and the occasional bird soared gracefully over the shimmering blue water. The sight was spectacular even for this floor of natural beauty.

As we all sat down in the shade Sky brought out a large wicker basket from her inventory and placed it on the ground between us, Andrew quickly lunged at it and opened it to reveal the piles of food which she had packed into it in the morning, obviously while I was still sleeping. This is how we spent the rest of the day, sitting under the tree eating food from the huge supply which seemed not to dwindle while talking about anything and everything that we thought of, ranging from funny encounters of our old lives and strange happenings in this world. We sat there laughing and talking, remembering the good times and trying to forget the bad that may have been in our lives.

As the sun began to fall most of the fishermen which had been sitting in chairs attempting to catch some fish had left and now only a few remained along with us who were now quietly sitting together against the tree looking at the horizon. The golden orange sun began to fall below the great horizon of trees ever so slowly plunging the floor into shadow. As it fell the sky around the sun turned many tones of orange and yellow creating a glowing aura of light around it reaching through to the heavens. It was a beautiful sight and looked soo much like the real thing that we had momentarily forgot that it was only an image projected into the sky.

After the sun had set I looked over to Aurora and Andrew to my right and saw that Andrew was down on his knees holding both of Aurora's hands with his own and looking right into her eyes. Both me and Sky noticed this and watched, but stayed silent. Aurora looked at Andrew in a confused and worried way.

"Aurora until I met you all this world didn't matter and all my time was put into finishing it, fighting an eternal struggle for freedom, although there were some good times it all fell back into simply fighting for survival, sanity and a crawl to avoid depression or grief and Steven isn't exactly the most supportive person when it comes to things like this. But then I met you out on that dungeon and things began to change, life began to brighten and I had started to care for you as more than just an ally in battle, I cared for you more than any one I had ever known. And back at the battle where you nearly died I was completely out of my mind with worry and guilt for dragging you into the troll fight, that's when I realised that I loved you. I hated to see anything bad happening to you, that's why I carried you back and stayed over you all that time, that's why I always try to protect you and that's why I no longer hate this world, because of you being here." He said slowly with true sincerity, he then took a deep breath as he took out the velvet box from his pocket and opened it. "Would you do me the utmost honour and pleasure of becoming my wife?"


	25. Chapter 25

Aurora looked at Andrew in complete fear and was frozen with shock, the silence which ensued seemed to last for decades and we could see that Andrew seemed to be loosing hope as every second passed. "YES!" Aurora screamed breathlessly in utter happiness and excitement as she launched herself at Andrew knocking him to the ground with a crushing hug which winded Andrew, however he seemed not to care as he returned the hug and was laughing. At this acceptance both me and Sky started clapping and cheering. After Aurora had let go of Andrew and gave him a long kiss she picked up the velvet box, which she had knocked out of Andrew's hand, from the floor and took out the fine gold ring and placed it on her left ring finger.

"It's beautiful." Aurora said in awe as she looked at the ring on her finger. The ring had a pink gem, which shone even in the dying light of the evening, in the shape of a rose flower encrusted into the ring at the top of the rounded gold ring. Along the sides of the ring coming down from the gem were smaller golden flower heads which stopped halfway down the ring. "This must have taken ages to make." Looking at Andrew in a questioning way.

"Ask Steven about that, he was the one who made it." Andrew said with a quick approving look my way, he then moved up to Aurora and put his arm around her and held her close, Aurora then placed rested her head on his shoulder. "I almost thought you were going to say no after you sat there silent for a while, I was getting really worried." Andrew said obviously wanting to know what was going through her mind at the time.

She looked up at Andrew and said. "At first I was just completely shocked at what you had just said and then I suppose my mind quickly went through my options and saying yes was the biggest and best option that I could have chosen. How long have you been planning this?" She answered the question before quickly following it up with one of her own.

"The proposal I said to myself I would do it since a few days after the battle, the things I said was completely from the heart right there and then, I needed no planning or time to rehearse what we both knew to be true. All I needed was the courage, or madness I suppose, to do it." He admitted without much shame or embarrassment as he still held her tightly, not wanting a moment lost without her.

"Well congratulations to you two finally getting together I suppose, even if we all knew it was coming." Sky said with a laugh and a big smile, she seemed not to look to surprised at the turn in events. "So Andrew, do you have any idea when the wedding is going to take place or how its going to be organised?" She asked in a wondering tone.

"Sky, I have ideas but nothing certain as I literally just proposed to her haven't I." Andrew answered in a slightly irritated yet patient tone, he then laid down with Aurora still close to him and stared up into the shining heavens above.

"I suppose you two would want to be left alone then?" I say quietly realising that Andrew had turned to the sky for a reason.

"Would be nice." I hear Aurora reply in a tired voice. At this I got up from the ground and began to walk back towards the cobble road which led back near to my house. Sky looked at a loss to what to do, but she soon got up with a great sigh and a shake of her head and walked quickly to catch up with me. The lakeside had emptied of fishermen and the dark water glistened in the bright glow of the brilliant white moon which hung low in the sky.

"You've known about that for a while now haven't you?" She asked me in an accusatory tone once she had caught up and we were out of ear shot of Andrew and Aurora.

"Yup, but he wanted to keep it secret so I did. And yes, before you go moaning at me, the reason we went to the forge was so I could pick up the ring, some how got it without you seeing as well." I started in a serious tone but ended slightly smug.

"Jesus, you're a sneaky bugger aren't you." She said in fake annoyance understanding why I had kept this from her. "Anyway we had better get back to the front line tomorrow, the 56th floor has a mad worm field boss which no one seems to know how to take down."

"I heard about that GeoCrawler, nasty piece of work. Not really surprised no one's taken it down, I mean we only took out the last boss about a week ago and I don't think everyone's been up there fully yet. But yes we should get up there, try map out some more areas or just train on some of the monsters, unless someone comes up with a plan for the boss." I say as I remember that I hadn't done much on the front line for a few days now.

"How long do you think this is all going to take, to get up to and clear floor 100?" Sky asked in a slightly defeated and tired way, it had taken just over a year to get to this point but we still had 45 more floors each of them harder than the last.

"I honestly don't know, I don't know when we're getting out of here, I don't know who will get out of here back to the real world. But I know that we wont be trapped in here forever, there's too many dammed stubborn frontliners for us to loose this game and I bet people on the outside are trying to end this almost as much as we are." I answer truthfully as I looked up at the canopy of leaves which revealed a narrow crack of the dark sky which held shining stars and faintly glowing cloudlike galaxies.


	26. Chapter 26

We all hid silently in the shadows of the rocky valley walls, all of us had our weapons drawn and ready. I crouched next to Sky along with a number of other solo fighters, the Fuurinkazan guild and Kirito, on the opposite side of the valley was the Holy Dragon Alliance, the Knights of the Blood Oath and the Golden Oak Rangers. In the centre of the narrow valley was a huge chunk out red meat, a rare A-rank piece of meat kindly donated by Klein. We intended to lure the Geocrawler, a field boss which had halted the advance of the front line by a week nearly, towards the piece of food, allowing us to ambush it from its weak and unguarded sides, a plan thought up by Klein and Kirito. We tensely waited silently and motionless for our field boss to arrive, the wind had started to pick up a bit and small dust clouds were starting to kick up.

It didn't take to long before we felt a slight rumble of the ground below us which quickly started to shake the stones that littered the dried brown earth. Suddenly a huge shape ruptured through the ground sending rocks flying wildly in every direction and eclipsing the sun behind it. The Geocrawler charged down at the chunk of meat with no hesitation, swinging its metallic scale plated tale without regard smashing apart the valley walls, making large boulders fly down past us narrowly missing. The Geocrawler was a huge and tremendously long worm which was covered in thick dark brown skin on its underbelly and sturdy golden coloured scales running along the upper body and enclosing its head. It had two huge claws which were similarly covered in the thick and heavy metal plating, it had a huge eye which was covered by a glowing green visor, it had two huge bone horns protruding from its head. However none of this compared to its seemingly endless amount of enormous yellowy teeth which quickly dripped with blood as it swiftly ripped through the massive chunk of meat with ease.

As it went for its second bite of the meat Kirito slashed down on a rope which was next to him with his Elucidator, this released a cascade of sharp boulders down upon the boss from the top of the valley cliff. However these rocks simply crashed down into the beast's metal scales and bounced of to the ground without dealing any sort of damage. The beast feeling the rocks hit its impenetrable scales grabbed hold of the meat, launched it high in the air and swallowed it whole, it then let out a tremendous guttural clicking sound which echoed around for a couple of seconds. Knowing that we could no longer wait any longer Kirito raised his sword high in the air so that all the players could see it clearly shining in the sunlight and ran down the valley's side straight at the Geocrawler. Hearing Kirito's heavy footsteps the Geocrawler turned its head and started to charge across the valley floor to meet him.

A moment after Kirito had started running all of the players assembled on both sides of the valley came out of hiding and charged down at the huge worm all with weapons ready and skills beginning to charge up in a mass glow of varied colours. I held my sword tightly to my side slightly raised and charging a armour piercing skill which made my dark blade glow bright green, while Sky held her white blade which was glowing a deep red above her head going in for a powerful smashing strike. The two waves of players clashed with the beast at the same time dealing many swift, powerful and precision strikes against the weaker sides of the beast or in an attempt to smash through its thick plated armour covering its face. I thrust my blade against a section of plating along its left claw and a moment later after I quickly jumped back Sky plummeted her sword down at the exact same spot to deal extra damage against the hopefully weakened armour.

However the armour wasn't even scratched in the slightest and the beast seemed not to even realise we had just attacked its claw, instead it rose its claws and began to stab down at players in front of it, kicking up clouds of dust, planting a crater into the ground and forcing any nearby players to jump away to avoid getting caught in the attack. At the rear the main guilds, seemingly failing to deal any visible damage whatsoever to the huge monster, were having similar problems as the spiked and heavily plated tail was flailing around madly sending any player unfortunate to be in its path flying into the rocky valley walls or sending them plummeting into the hard earth. The few hits we were able to land onto the Boss' fleshy underbelly dealt extremely small amounts of damage but quickly enraging the boss. At this rate this battle would last for hours and a massive amount of the players here would either be dead or close to it, this was any boss we had come across.

"EVERYONE GO FOR ITS EYE!" I just heard Klein shout above the chaos of the battle in the hope to find its weak spot before this battle turned into a pointless slaughter. At this command about half of the players, mainly the light weapon and armour users, began to find ways to climb up onto its back, head and tail in an attempt to smash through the green visor which protected its eye. However the few players who were able to climb up were quickly shaken from the Geocrawler as it began to thrash about as it began to adapt to or changing tactics. I was now sweeping its sharp claws widely stopping most frontal attacks and its tail was less frantic and had more power put into each strike.

Suddenly after I jumped out of the way of yet another claw swipe I saw Kirito jump on top of one of the other claw and take a running jump off of the claw. He held his sword high in the air with the blade facing downwards and charging a dark purple skill which smoked from the metal. The Geocrawler snapped its head upwards to see the oncoming attack but could do little to stop it. Kirito's blade smashed down against the visor with a crash and explosion of releasing power, however his blade simply glanced off the visor leaving not a crack or scratch. In surprise Kirito fell to the ground with a thud, the Geocrawler then went to bite down at Kirito forcing him to move from the ground and out of its range in a few quick movements.

"Kirito, Klein, nothing is going to work and we are just loosing people we need to get out of here!" Asuna shouted over at the two as she jumped around the worms flying tail. She then called out the order to fall back to the Blood Knights and began a full retreat down through the valley. Kirito looked at Klein, who nodded and shouted out for everyone to fall back to the town. However as we began to regroup and run back to the town the boss went on the attack murderously swiping its claws and biting down at any player who fell to far behind. We were now in a full retreat with our enemy hot on our heels, not exactly the expected outcome of this ambush.

The town gate, a huge reinforced thick wooden gate was opened slightly allowing a small amount of players through at a time, this left a small number of players guarding the door as players got through. The Geocrawler had us trapped in this small dead end of the valley but before it could reach the gates we were all inside and the gate was locked shut. As we began to move through the town in relief we all could here the constant crashing sounds of the boss trying to smah its way through the gates without any success.


	27. Chapter 27

The sound of the Boss crashing its claws in rage against the imposing wooden gate resounded through the town, but the players walking into the town of Pani from it were relieved knowing that we had escaped the horror that was now stuck on the other side of the imposing reinforced wooden unbreakable gate. Pani was a small town made up of many medium sized wooden houses surrounded by many green trees and a district at the back of the town of anthill like buildings made from the yellowish stone of the area, this was all encircled inside a high walled gorge of rough and jagged yellowish stone.

I stood not far behind the locked gate in the shadow of the still raging beast, sheathing my sharp blade in its sheath and anxious as to weather the gate would hold against its viscous attacks, even though I knew that the game wouldn't allow the gate to fall. After a few more enraged attacks on the gate the Geocrawler seemed to have realised it couldn't get through the gate, it let out a short clicking noise before turning away from the gate and moved back into the valley where it promptly burrowed deep into the ground sending a cloud of dust and dirt into the air and causing the ground to shake slightly.

I turned away from the gate to see that both Klein, still with his sword held tensely in his hand, and Kirito, slowly placing his single handed black blade into its sheath on his back, looking out over the gate with looks of annoyance at how their plan had worked out. No success in killing it, wasting a rare A-rank food, finding a seemingly unbreakable defence and nearly loosing skilled players in the process. The two of them quickly turned away from the gate and walked off silently into the town, following the crowd of players that were still slowly moving away from the gates.

Me, not seeing much point in just standing there, also began to walk back into the richer trading district of the town. The streets were wide, clean and were paved with large light grey cobbles, lining the streets was a number of detached beige coloured buildings with black slate roofs some large and some relatively small, each selling a different range of items or services, from high end and mystical rune and crystal shops to the general bare basic food merchants. The merchants themselves varied as much as their shops, some wore long flowing dark silk robes while others wore simple cloth and cotton clothes and some wore various bits and pieces of shining armour as they all stood outside their shops calling out to and bartering with passing players.

As I kept walking down the street the cobbles began to become mossier and rougher, the buildings started to size down significantly until all was left were a number of wooden stalls where farmers sold their produce to any who would listen to their prices and offers. Pani was a very polarised town when it came to wealth, the district closer to the gate was where the shop owners and the rich men of the town lived in solid, comfortable and somewhat luxurious houses, but as you moved further and further from the gate the solid brick and wooden buildings began to dissipate into a large spread of anthill like homes, small formations of hollowed stone with some openings for light and an open entrance, this is where the general farmer slept, ate and generally lived when not at work.

However the poorer people of Pani seemed not to be resentful to the richer and were content with the simple, yet laborious, life style which they had been destined to live. Past the hollowed rock houses was the large expanse of fields which had a huge range of crops growing on them, from wheat to rice, any crop that could be farmed was being farmed in a huge miss match of patchwork fields owned by close to 100 people. This was the entirety of the 56th floor, the floor entrance lay on the far side of the fields in the side of one of the surrounding mountains, all the way through Pani, the floor's only town, through the long barren valley that the Geocrawler had just escaped from ending with a huge opening from the valley where the floor portal was hewn into the mountainside with a large orange stoned staircase leading up to it. This was one of the smallest floors we had yet to encounter, yet the problem of the Geocrawler had made it one of the hardest to clear.

I walked through the no longer cobbled, but dirt street up to one of the small hollow houses which I walked into through the opening in the face of the rock. I entered a medium sized room which was partially lit by sunlight pouring through a couple of small square openings high on the walls, the room was simply furnished with two small beds a small rough and slightly chipped round wooden table which stood on four thick legs, around it were 4 similar hard chairs, in the far corner of the room was a large ash pile under a roughly cut chimney which cut out of the rock letting light in through it.

Sitting at the table both of the Andrews and Oliver who were playing some sort of card game with a pack of monster imaged cards, each of them hiding their cards form the other two and concentrating on their next move. While Aurora was lying down on one of the beds looking up at the ceiling and Sky was sitting against the wall by the burnt out fireplace reading an old leather bound book., both of them not really paying attention to what was going on around them. Oliver was the only one who realised I had walked in, as he sat facing the door, and quickly said "Hi Steven." before looking back down to the card game where he promptly threw his cards on the table in defeat.

The rest of them looked up at me and mumbled greetings, still half in their own worlds, this was the norm for us when the frontliners were on a boss raid. We would rent out a house so we could stay close to the front so that we could be called out to help against the boss a a moments notice and so that we could add any ideas we had to the strategy meetings which were held daily to gather ideas and form a plan of attack. Should that plan fail however, as the one today did, the six of us went back to our rented house and just sat around for a few hours doing things of little importance before going back to goal at hand.

I sat down in the last chair at the table next to Oliver and asked him, "So, how did it go on your side with the Worm's tail, as its head and claws were a pain to dodge for me." I say only somewhat interesting in the answer, but wanting to break the silence that held the house.

"Wasn't to hard at the start, but it didn't realise that we were there at that point, once it did know we were there it was hell with that bloody spiked tail flying from side to side and ploughing into the ground every so often. It didn't seem to have much of an attack pattern either, so it was hard to predict where it was going to hit. We landed a bunch of hits on it though, shame practically all of them hit its sodding armour and pretty much bounced off and then the very few that hit the thing did such a small amount of damage it would have taken hours to finish that thing off." He said angrily at how so far this boss seemed impossible to beat by the normal force that every other boss in Aincrad had fallen to.

"Same happened for us with its armour, even Kirito couldn't smash through its visor. I suppose we had better wait till tomorrow's meeting, see if anyone has come up with any other brilliant ideas or see if the Dragons or Blood Knights just come up with another way to try take it down using force." I say sarcastically knowing that something of the sort was likely to be suggested. Andrew suddenly threw down his cards and Andrew B let out a cheer and punched the air with his hands as he placed down his winning hand, I turn to the table as Andrew B collected the cards in and said, "Deal me in as well."


	28. Chapter 28

We all stood around the cracked stone table, partially lit by a steak of light filtering into the room through the many round windows in the hard and dark stone walls that surrounded us, looking at a yellowed map of the floor displaying the regions of Pani and the regions beyond the walls which the Geocrawler and other monsters lurked. At the head of the table was Asuna in her normal white and red uniform with her arms folded, backed by 6 heavily armoured Knights, each of them in similar red and red uniforms and all had sheathed great swords on their backs. The Holy Dragon Alliance stood to one side of the table with similar numbers, Fuurinkazan stood back a little from the table with Agil looking over the map, Kirito stood to the side of the table near to the Dragons but not too close, me and the Rangers stood to the side of the Dragons on the opposite side of the table waiting for something to be said.

Suddenly Asuna slammed her hand down on the table and said to all of us in the authoritative and determined voice she always seemed to use at meetings, "We'll lure the boss into the village." She let this sink into the people who were gathered around, some made confused sounds, others looked on in agreement to the idea. But before anything more could be said Kirito had stepped forward and looked at Asuna.

"W-Wait a second. If you do that, the villagers..." He began to speak in a surprised way, obviously against the idea that she had just proposed. But Asuna quickly cut in to his sentence.

"That's the idea. While the boss is killing the NPCs, we'll attack and destroy it." She said without remorse laying out her somewhat cold but simple plan for beating this heavily armoured boss. What she was saying made sense, we attacked it by surprise but we couldn't keep it distracted after we had poured down from the hills to attack it, therefore for this attempt Asuna wanted to use the NPCs for bait to do what we preciously couldn't. I didn't particularly like the idea, but if thats what it took to take down the boss, then that's what we'd have to come to.

"NPCs aren't just 3-D objects like trees or rocks. They're..." Kirito tried to protest once more before yet again being cut over by Asuna who looked at him with an impatient, annoyed and somewhat disgusted glance.

"Alive? Is that it?" She said coldly, at this I saw Kirito falter a bit in his stance knowing that he had no way of denying this underlying fact that the NPCs were still only the projections of a computer program, nothing more. "They're only objects. Even if they are killed, they'll just respawn." she continued now looking back down at the map.

At this Kirito simply said "I can't go along with this." obviously giving up on his protests against the plan, instead he was now not going to cooperate, meaning that we had now lost one of our best front liners before any fight had even begun.

Asuna leaned back up from the table and looked at Kirito irritably "I, Asuna, Vice Commander of The Knights of the Blood Oath, will oversee this operation. You will obey my orders." She asserted her authority as the second in command of the strongest guild in Aincrad and of the organised front liners, she practically held the authority to order near enough everyone here to do whatever she wanted. However Kirito just looked back at her in a calm way, shook his head and walked out of the meeting hall without saying another word. Asuna looked back at everyone in the room "Anyone else got anything to add." everyone remained silent and still, "Right then, I expect to see everyone at the gates at noon, meeting adjourned."

She turned from the table and walked from the room, followed by her entourage of heavily armoured knights, as they left everyone began to mill around some leaving, some staying but most people were talking about the abrupt way that Kirito had left the meeting and of the coming hours when the brutal and cold, yet logical plan would be set into motion. I left the large, yet dark room, and walked outside where I was momentarily blinded by the bright sun that was slowly climbing over horizon of tall buildings and mountains. Outside people were slowly moving away from the large meeting hall, a building similar to the rest of the ant hill like houses but bigger with a large dirt path leading up to it.

Behind me I heard Andrew B talking in his usual loud manner, not particularly caring if anyone was listening to him. "Honestly I don't see what's wrong with Asuna's plan, I mean yer, the villagers are likely to get killed, but unlike us, who are much more important and LIVING, they will just respawn in five minutes or so after they die. That way they get killed and we don't, no real harm done, whereas another head on plan like last time will get even more people killed in this game." He said resolutely, knowing what he was saying was true, even if people may not agree with the idea of offering the townspeople up as a tasty offering.

I just shook my head, knowing that I couldn't change Andrew B's mind and anyway it didn't really matter. But when I heard the rest of them agreeing instead of going against it like I though they might I turned around and spoke to them. "So just because they're not real in the sense that they're not actually human, you're prepared to let these people get completely massacred in an attempt to kill a boss, people who have helped us and given us places to stay and sold us a fair amount of items. Its not even as if they don't act like humans, they act and talk as if they were players even if their speech is blatantly scripted in some places."

"In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity and if you never venture, you never win." Oliver came back quickly, I recognised them from the Art of War. The first one meaning that in the chaos of the village we would have our opportunity to find its weaknesses and strike, the second meaning that we would never win any battles without trying things that may be risky or that may break the standard forms of fighting. "And anyway as Asuna said they'll respawn, even if every single NPC dies before we push it out of the town, nothing has been lost really." He continued calmly. I still looked at him annoyed, every way you look at it the plan is simple and would theoretically work, I just didn't want to offer up defenceless peasants and merchants just so we could attempt a win to move onto the next floor.

"Its still only a game Steven. I don't like the fact that we're following her orders either but we both know damn well at the moment this is all that we can do." Andrew B added, he could obviously see the conflict between liking and hating the plan going on in my mind. "Well there's not much point waiting around, noon is half an hour away so we might as well get over to there now." He continued decisively changing the subject from the actual plan at hand.


	29. Chapter 29

Within fifteen minutes of walking we had reached the large wooden town gates, they were closed but not locked so that the odd person could walk in or out through the gates into the valley. At the gate stood Asuna, her 6 Knights, 7 fully armoured and battle readied Dragons and against all expectations Kirito stood in front of the gates with Fuurinkazan placed firmly behind him. Kirito and the members of Fuurinkazen, however, seemed not to be waiting for the noon attack but were blocking the gateway from both the Blood knights and the Dragons, while Kirito stood off with his sword held at his side against Asuna who similarly held her white and teal blade at her side.

Seeing this stand off we stood where we were, a few meters behind the two opposed groups, Kirito quickly noticed us and shook his head in a way that simply told us to keep out of the way. He calmly looked back at Asuna who had fire in her eyes and held her rapier with a strong grip, almost waiting for an attack from Kirito. Kirito stepped forward, making Asuna raise her blade slightly and made her strengthen her stance. "I wont let you go along with this plan Asuna. You may think it will work, but it wont, its armour is too thick and in such a small and tight space its going to make it even harder to hit even if it is chasing after the villagers. If the rocks from yesterday alongside with a full two sided surprise attack wont work, why do you think this will do any better?" He asked calmly with his sword still slightly loose in his hand, obviously he was trying to reason with her before any fighting broke out.

"What if it does work, what then? Are you willing to miss this chance of quickly taking down this boss just because some soulless computer programs will get attacked, I'd rather clear this floor quickly instead of dragging it out for however much longer. Now get out of the way!" She came back angrily, seemingly far beyond reasoning with Kirito.

Kirito just shook his head in disbelief. "You honestly think I'm going to do what you tell me to do just because your the vice commander of the Blood Knights, its seriously pathetic how your guild tries to order people around just because your one of the strongest when it comes to money and equipment. Now are you going to give up on this stupid plan of your's to kill of the towns people in a vain attempt at a boss or are we going to stand here for the rest of the day." He said with irritation seemingly growing by the second, he also now held his blade tensely waiting for an attack.

"Well if you're not going to move, I'll have to move you myself." She announced with sheer fury as she, without looking down from Kirito, flicked open her menu panel and swiftly sent a duel request to Kirito. A panel appeared in front of Kirito, which he studied for a few seconds before slowly pressing the accept button and looking back up at the furious Asuna. A second after he pressed the accept button huge white lettering rose up between them reading "DUEL", under that was a wide white tab with the two's names and images of their face on opposite ends with a dark pink VS between them.

Asuna readied her Lambent Light in her hand ready to make a a swift initial attack, while on the other hand Kirito stood opposite her moved into a stronger stance moved his free hand back and put his Elucidator slightly forward and pointing down. By now people had begun to turn up for the twelve O'clock start and now gathered in a semi circle around the two duellers, some beginning to jeer and others giving out words of encouragement. However neither Asuna or Kirito seemed to be listening, their attention completely drawn onto each other.

A small round timer appeared over their heads with the number 20 above it. It started its countdown 19...18...17...10, the crowd was now silent and everyone was seemingly holding their breaths waiting for the duel to begin, 2... Asuna moved her feet slightly while Kirito strengthened his grip on his one handed sword.

1...0 START, the words burst out of the timer while the duel strip brightened and dissappeared as a mechanical noise sounded the start of the fight.

As soon as the timer hit zero both of them burst into action. Asuna brought her sword back, charging up a huge pink skill which emanated from her blade, and charged down at Kirito using her unparalleled speed. Kirito began to run forward while holding his sword to his side building up a blinding green skill which flared out from his sword. Asuna swiftly jumped in the air and with a spin she brought her blade plummeting down towards Kirito, Kirito swung his body sideways bringing his heavy blade up to meet Asuna's light rapier strike. The tip of the rapier missed hitting Kirito directly but sliced a shallow cut into Kirito's shirt and within a second the Elucidator smashed into the side of Lambent light with an eruption of power which sent it flying from Asuna's hand and scraping across the floor.

Asuna, shocked at what happened took a second to realise what had happened and shot a glance over to her disarmed rapier which lay a few meters to her left, however Kirito was next to her as soon as she had landed from her jump and came at her with a green glowing sword that was held to his side. He sliced his sword up to her chest, intending to land a solid blow which would end the duel, seeing the blade coming Asuna hurriedly ducked forward just below the blade's arc. Before Kirito could do anything more she had shoulder barged into his stomach, winding him for a second and making him loosen his grip on his sword and stumbling him back a few paces. She then, in the few precious seconds that Kirito took to recover, raced for her sword, sliding to get to it and with out a moments hesitation she stood back up and moved in for the next attack.

She quickly planted 2 precision strikes into Kirito's unprotected arm before quickly being put on the defence by a number of brutally powerful swings from Kirito. The two quickly sized each other up again and it was Kirito this time that pressed the initial attack, he ran full sprint at Asuna with his sword held high to his right. He span around swinging his sword initially downwards but as he turned into Asuna he brought it blazing up towards Asuna who could only turn her blade to try and deflect the strike.

The Elucidator's flat edge scraped smoothly across Lambent Light while the tip of the blade dug deep into and through Asuna's chest and up through her shoulder, this blow left a large glowing red pixelated gouge in her side and sent her flying backwards to the ground. She hit the ground with a thud and her rapier fell from her hand with a clatter of metal on the hard stone floor. Her HP bar inched slightly into yellow and the duel was over, the duel panel came back up showing the words "Winner" with Kirito's half highlighted in orange and Asuna's greyed out, the timer below it read 2:17. Kirito sheathed his sword quickly and looked down at the defeated Knight, he put out his hand to help her get up.

However she gave the hand a venomous glare before she painfully got up from the ground nursing her wounded side, she slowly moved over to where her sword lay on the ground, picked up, sheathed it and with a quick look of pure anger yet mixed with exhaustion directed at Kirito she walked off into the town, her stunned entourage quickly followed after her with the clanging of their armour and weapons. Everyone in the surrounded players stood silently stunned at how easily and quickly Kirito had taken on The Lightning Flash Asuna without taking much damage himself.

He looked around at everyone and simply said "Show's over. I expect to see everyone tomorrow at the meeting" before he himself walked through the crowd and off into the town without a second look back and seemingly without much care of what he had just accomplished in front of the massed front line players. With no other reason to be stood at the gates everyone began to disperse of to their different businesses and places of residence to wait again for the next meeting where a new plan of attack may be suggested.


	30. Chapter 30

We stood around the cracked stone table with the same yellowed area map once again, the sunlight yet again filtered through in the same patterns as before only slightly different, we all stood around in the same way that we had the previous day waiting for a plan to be proposed by someone and then for it to be explained and picked apart bit by bit by those who felt it necessary. All was the same expect for one thing, next to the reluctant yet resigned looking Asuna stood a little girl with light brown hair which stuck out at placed tied that back with a large white and blue rimmed ribbon, she had large green eyes and she wore a simple yellow and pink frock like clothing. She was up on her tip toes with her hands holding her head just above the table so that she could see what was going on and didn't seem to feel the slightest bit out of place around somewhat battle hardened players who all wore some form of armour and all who had a weapon visibly sheathed.

She was a level 1 NPC, young weak and without responsibility, her name was Ruru and was one of the few NPCs that had actually taken care of us Frontliners and had previously helped us in any way which she could, from ferrying simple messages to giving us a better knowledge of the local area, who to trust and where best to go for certain items.

Everyone gathered, although they held nothing but admiration and gratitude to Ruru, all wanted to know why she stood here in the strategy meeting among warriors such as us, many gave Ruru and Asuna questioning looks, some laughed and some waited to be given explanations before making any judgements. Once everyone had arrived and the doorway had guards, keeping random NPCs and players from interrupting the meeting, Asuna stepped forward in a less arrogant and authoritative way that we had become accustomed to, she had obviously taken the loss against Kirito pretty hard.

"Hello everyone." She said reluctantly, almost not wanting to talk to us. "Lets get to the point. I assume you're all wondering what mad idea I've come up with to try regain some face and to defeat this boss at the same time. I'm not here to try and hide my loss yesterday, but a loss is a loss! Now are you willing to hear me out as this plan will most likely succeed and it doesn't involve the town, only Ruru here." She addressed the players that looked at her in a way that showed that after yesterday they were somewhat unwilling to listen to her plans. "Last night I was talking to Ruru around midnight, while talking to her I seemed to have triggered a special conversation pattern. During this Ruru sang a lullaby." She explained quickly what had happened and let it settle in with people for a few seconds.

Most of the players including myself quickly saw where this was going and nodded and murmured in agreement with what she was proposing, however some of the Players were less convinced and made a show of it. "So I assume you mean that this, lullaby, will put the Geocrawler to sleep, allowing us to kill it with ease. How can you be sure that her song is meant for this, or are you yet again throwing caution to the wind and hoping for the best with this." One of the Holy Dragon Alliance's players asked sceptically while trying to push people over into his point of view.

"Why else would she have been helping us so much then, I think that she was to help us so that it was physically possible to find out that she held the key to defeating the boss. I mean come on, can anyone else think of any other way to take this metal clad worm?" everyone remained quiet, "And up till now the floor boss pattern has been a bit linear, find labyrinth, find boss room, fight, proceed. Do you seriously think that's how every boss battle is going to go all the way up to floor 100." She countered his argument with momentum and confidence, the outspoken player stepped back from the table seemingly not knowing how to come back from this.

"I think we should see what Ruru says about this, as we will be using her in this wont we?" Kirito joined the conversation, obviously still against using the villagers to a degree that he would only be happy if Ruru agreed without any influences telling her what to do. At the mention of her name she looked round at Kirito curiously but stayed quiet. "So, Ruru do you think you could help us with the Geocrawler, its okay if you don't want to do it, its all up to you?".

She looked at Kirito, then slowly looked around at Asuna who gave an encouraging smile for a few seconds and then looked over at everyone else, all of whom were watching her every movement. She looked back at Kirito and with conviction said "If it helps, then I'll do it." She gave a quick nod as she spoke and looked straight at Kirito without wavering at his somewhat sceptical but content look which he threw at her.

"Happy now?" Asuna said with sarcasm, she looked away from Kirito and down to the yellowed map which was laying on the table. "So in link to using her lullaby I have created a small side long plan to draw the Geocrawler out into open ground." She moved around the table so she stood next to the outer rim section of the floor and pointed to a small hill like feature which was represented by a number of faint contour lines. "This is roughly where the Geocrawler's lair is located." She quickly looked up to make sure that people agreed with what she had just said before moving on, "So, I think we should send out a small team of players, evenly split between light and heavy weaponry, they will draw the Geocrawler out of its lair and run like hell to over here." She ran her finger along her proposed route, a number of winding valley paths up to a large open gorge like area about half a mile from the lair. "When the advance team get back with the Geocrawler in tow we will get Ruru to sing her lullaby to put it to sleep so that we can kill it." She finished expecting people to protest in some way, but instead everyone was nodding their heads or had reaction less faces obviously waiting for something more to be said before making a decision.

Klein moved forward so that he stood on the opposite side of the table to Asuna and asked, "Who do you want to stick in the advance party then?" he said very bluntly picking out the one thing she hadn't fully specified that could make the plan succeed or make it a complete failure.

She looked at Klein for a few seconds, thinking over her options, before coming to her conclusion. She looked up at me and the Rangers and said "I think the Rangers would be a good team to send out along with 4 other soloers to make it an even 8. For the soloers Woods and Sky are normally with the rangers so those two are going, for the other two I don't know." As we were mentioned we nodded our agreement and waited for the next two players to be known.

At that two players moved forward to the table, one had brilliant green eyes bright blue hair which hung down her leather trench coat like jacket the other had long flowing fiery red hair, matching the colour of her eyes who wore a short sleeved purple shirt. The two girls had rapiers sheathed around their waists with handles matching their hair colours. The one with blue hair was called Celestia, the other was named Ruby. The two girls had joined the Frontline very early on, somewhere back in the third and fourth floors, and had gained a reputation as a skilled and ruthless fighting pair who could win a battle that where the odds were stacked against them greatly. However they weren't very well known outside of the small number of Frontliners due to them constantly fighting at the front and that they were practically only soldiers for the guilds such as the Knights to command.

"We'll do it." Celestia said shortly with confidence and a hint of cockiness in her voice, Asuna looked at the two of them with a slightly smug but content grin.

"Any one got any other questions?" She asked the players, when no one posed any questions she brought the meeting to an end "Well then that's settled then, we'll go at this at 12 again. Meeting adjourned."


End file.
